Performing operations on a set of objects in a database system

ABSTRACT

A method and system for updating data for a set of objects in a database is provided. A request identifies a set of objects using a property of the objects and an operation to be performed thereon. The object request is translated to a relational request such that a column in a table corresponding to the property can be operated upon by a relational data store mechanism.

The present application is a divisional of and claims priority of U.S.patent application Ser. No. 10/199,977, filed Jul. 20, 2002, the contentof which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to database systems.

In conventional relational databases, all data are stored in namedtables. The tables are described by their features. In other words, therows of each table contain items of identical type, and the definitionsof the columns of the table (i.e., the column names and the data typesstored in the column) describe the attributes of each of the instancesof the object. By identifying its name, its column names and the datatypes of the column contents, a table is completely described. Queriesto a relational data base are formulated in a query language. One suchlanguage is SQL (Structure Query Language) which is widely used incommercial relational data base systems. The data types offered by SQLcan be classified as character arrays (names), numbers, and data typesrelated to date and time. Tables can be modified or combined by severaloperations of relational algebra such as the application of Booleanoperators, projection (i.e. selection of columns) or the Cartesianproduct.

Relational databases offer several advantages. Data base queries arebased on a comparison of the table contents. Thus, no pointers arerequired in relational databases, and all relations are treateduniformly. Further, the tables are independent (they are not related bypointers), so it is easier to maintain dynamic data sets. The tables areeasily expandable by simply adding new columns. Also, it is relativelyeasy to create user-specific views from relational databases.

There are, however, a number of disadvantages associated with relationaldatabases as well. For example, access to data by reference toproperties is not optimal in the classical relational data model. Thiscan make such databases cumbersome in many applications.

Another recent technology for database systems is referred to as objectoriented data base systems. These systems offer more complex data typesin order to overcome the restrictions of conventional relationaldatabases. In the context of object oriented data base models, an“object” includes both data and the functions (or methods) which can beapplied to the object. Each object is a concrete instance of an objectclass defining the attributes and methods of all its instances. Eachinstance has its unique identifier by which it can be referred to in thedatabase.

Object oriented databases operate under a number of principles. One suchprinciple is referred to as inheritance. Inheritance means that newobject classes can be derived from another class. The new classesinherit the attributes and methods of the other class (the super-class)and offer additional attributes and operations. An instance of thederived class is also an instance of the super-class. Therefore, therelation between a derived class and its super-class is referred to asthe “isA” relation.

A second principle related to object oriented databases is referred toas “aggregation.” Aggregation means that composite objects may beconstructed as consisting of a set of elementary objects. A “containerobject” can communicate with the objects contained therein by theirmethods of the contained objects. The relation between the containerobject and its components is called a “partOf” relation because acomponent is a part of the container object.

Yet another principle related to object oriented databases is referredto as encapsulation. According to encapsulation, an application can onlycommunicate with an object through messages. The operations provided byan object define the set of messages which can be understood by theobject. No other operations can be applied to the object.

Another principle related to object oriented databases is referred to aspolymorphism. Polymorphism means that derived classes may re-definemethods of their super-classes.

Objects present a variety of advantages. For example, operations are animportant part of objects. Because the implementations of the operationsare hidden to an application, objects can be more easily used byapplication programs. Further, an object class can be provided as anabstract description for a wide variety of actual objects, and newclasses can be derived from the base class. Thus, if an applicationknows the abstract description and using only the methods provided by,the application can still accommodate objects of the derived classes,because the objects in the derived classes inherit these methods.However, object oriented databases are not yet as widely used incommercial products as relational databases.

Yet another database technology attempts to combine the advantages ofthe wide acceptance of relational data bases and the benefits of theobject oriented paradigm. This technology is referred to asobject-relational database systems. These databases employ a data modelthat attempts to add object oriented characteristics to tables. Allpersistent (database) information is still in tables, but some of thetabular entries can have richer data structure. These data structuresare referred to as abstract data types (ADTs). An ADT is a data typethat is constructed by combining basic alphanumeric data types. Thesupport for abstract data types presents certain advantages. Forexample, the methods associated with the new data type can be used toindex, store, and retrieve records based on the content of the new datatype.

Some conventional object-relational databases support an extended formof SQL, sometimes referred to as ObjectSQL. The extensions are providedto support the object model (e.g., queries involving object attributes).However, these object-relational databases are still relational becausethe data is stored in tables of rows and columns, and SQL, with someextensions, is the language for data definition, manipulation, andquery. Both the target of a query and the result of a query are stilltables. The extended SQL language is often still the primary interfaceto the database. Therefore, there is no direct support of host objectlanguages and their objects. This forces programmers to continue totranslate between objects and tables.

Another problem with existing object-relational systems includesoperating on a set of objects. Conventionally, the data for each objectis located and brought out of the database, commonly to a remotecomputer, manipulated, and then sent back to the database server andstored therein. For a set of objects, this operation is repeated eachtime, which by its nature, is time consuming.

One approach for updating a set of objects that is less time consumingincludes writing stored procedures that execute on the database serveron sets of data. Disadvantages of this technique include that thebusiness objects are not used for storing the data. Consequently, ratherthan using object terminology, the procedure uses terminology defined bythe database schema, which could be quite different. Likewise, theprocedures would include different updating methods so the developerwould need to know both object-oriented authoring as well as arelational language operating such as Structured Query Language (SQL).Finally, the business logic is now separated into two locations, thedatabase and traditional object-oriented language code.

There is thus a need for improved techniques for operating on datapertaining to a set of objects.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A method and system for updating data for a set of objects in a databaseis provided. An object request identifies a set of objects using aproperty of the objects and an operation to be performed thereon. Therequest is translated to a relational request such that a column in atable corresponding to the property can be operated upon by a relationaldata store mechanism.

The invention can also be implemented as a programming interface with amethod to accomplish this request. Generally, the interface is performedin terms of a type of class of objects identified with a statement. Anexpression defines a set of objects of the class. An action or operationto perform on the set of objects is then defined by another statement.The action or operation can include updating data pertaining to theobjects, removing a set of objects as a unit, moving a set of objectsfrom one location to another, or copying a set of objects from onelocation to another.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of one embodiment of an object-relational datastorage system.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an environment in which the presentinvention can be used.

FIG. 3 is a UML object model class diagram in accordance with oneembodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4A is an exemplary parse tree.

FIG. 4B is a UML object model class diagram for expressions.

FIG. 4C is an exemplary parse tree with objects.

FIG. 5 illustrates a plurality of class-table mappings for differentexemplary entities.

FIG. 6 illustrates an ad hoc query.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram illustrating the operation of a data accesssystem in performing an ad hoc query.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram showing join translation.

FIG. 9 is an exemplary parse tree.

FIG. 10A-C-2 are flow diagrams showing a process for building a directedacyclic graph (DAG) from a parse tree.

FIG. 11A-11G illustrate building a DAG.

FIG. 12 shows a merged DAG.

FIG. 13 shows merging DAGs according to Boolean operators.

FIG. 14 is a UML diagram showing concrete entities derived from aconcrete entity, all mapped to separate class tables.

FIG. 15 is a UML diagram with concrete entities derived from an abstractentity.

FIG. 16 is a UML diagram showing concrete entities derived from aconcrete entity, all mapped to a single table.

FIG. 17 is a UML diagram of an inheritance hierarchy, showing classtables for the entities illustrated.

FIG. 18 is a flow diagram illustrating one embodiment of an algorithmfor translating queries that have inheritance.

FIGS. 18-A and 18-B are flow diagrams illustrating portions of FIG. 18in greater detail.

FIG. 19 illustrates the inheritance hierarchy of FIG. 17 formed into atree of entity groups.

FIG. 20 illustrates another inheritance hierarchy.

FIG. 21 illustrates the inheritance hierarchy shown in FIG. 20 formedinto entity groups.

FIG. 22 is a flow diagram illustrating the construction of a queryselect list to define the structure of the result set expected by thesystem.

FIG. 23 is a flow diagram illustrating how columns that store data forselected properties are added to the select list.

FIG. 24 is a UML diagram illustrating a graph structure to be queried.

FIG. 25 is an exemplary select list containing columns for the objectsin FIG. 24 that are to be queried.

FIGS. 25A and 25B show the class definitions (pseudo-code) for theobjects.

FIG. 26 illustrates a set operation.

FIG. 27 is a flow diagram illustrating the operation of a set operation.

FIG. 28 is a pictorial representation of a containment hierarchy.

FIG. 29 is pictorial representation of an entity and an entity key.

FIG. 30 is a pictorial representation of a business application.

FIG. 31 is a pictorial representation of an entity key.

FIG. 32 is a pictorial representation of a blended key.

FIG. 33 is a pictorial representation of a database table.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF ILLUSTRATIVE EMBODIMENTS Overview

It should be noted that the inventive features of the invention can beapplied to O-R databases or relational databases, because the inventionbridges the capabilities of both types of databases as well as thecapabilities of object oriented programming languages. The result is anO-R database system that provides significant advantages over priordatabase technology. It will be described herein in terms of applying toan O-R database, for the sake of illustration only, as it is equallybeneficial for relational databases.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating one embodiment of a data storageand accessing system 10 in accordance with the present invention. System10 includes data access system (or entity persistence system) 12,relational data store mechanism 14, relational database 16, andclass-table mapping 18. System 10 is illustratively an object-relational(O-R) data storage system in which stored data can be referred to interms of entities (or objects) and their properties, rather thanelements of the data base schema, such as tables and columns. FIG. 1illustrates one mechanism for doing this.

As shown in FIG. 1, the data can be organized in terms of entities 20(which is used interchangeably herein with the term objects). Eachentity illustratively includes a metadata portion 22 and a remainingattributes portion 24. The metadata portion 22 describes the entity 20,while the remaining attributes 24 define further attributes of entity20, such as the data stored therein. Each of the attributes in entity 20is mapped to a corresponding entity table 26 and a specific column 28 ina given entity table 26.

Data access system 12 can receive various forms of requests such as aquery 30 which specifies an entity, or portions of an entity or group ofentities, to be retrieved. Query 30 can illustratively be expressed interms of objects (“entities”) and properties, rather than in terms oftables and columns. The particular manner in which queries are expressedis described in greater detail below.

In any case, data access system 12 receives the query 30 and accessesclass-table mapping 18. In this way, data access system 12 can determinethe location of the data for the entities identified by query 30. Dataaccess system 12 includes a translator 13 that translates query 30 intoa relational database query 32 which is suitable for input to relationaldata store mechanism 14. In one illustrative embodiment, relational datastore mechanism 14 is a SQL SERVER database server such as thatavailable from the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., thataccesses a relational database 16. Therefore, data access system 12receives queries 30 in terms of objects and translates those queriesinto an appropriate relational database query 32 that is then providedto the data store mechanism (or server) 14 which actually accesses thedata in relational database 16.

Relational data store mechanism 14 retrieves the requested data andreturns it in the form of relational database results 34. The resultsare returned to data access system 12 which then formulates therelational database results 34 into a requested result set 36. In oneillustrative embodiment, result set 36 is requested in query 30. Query30 may request that the results be output in the form of one or moreobjects or simply as a data set. In any case, data access system 12arranges the relational database results 34 into the proper format andoutputs them as result set 36.

Data access system 12 hides the physical data store (mechanism 14 anddatabase 16) from the users and developers enabling them to work interms of entities rather than requiring them to know both the schema ofdatabase 16 and the syntax of the particular data store mechanism 14.Before describing this in greater detail, FIG. 2 shows one embodiment ofan environment in which the present invention can be used.

FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a suitable computing system environment100 on which the invention may be implemented. The computing systemenvironment 100 is only one example of a suitable computing environmentand is not intended to suggest any limitation as to the scope of use orfunctionality of the invention. Neither should the computing environment100 be interpreted as having any dependency or requirement relating toany one or combination of components illustrated in the exemplaryoperating environment 100.

The invention is operational with numerous other general purpose orspecial purpose computing system environments or configurations.Examples of well known computing systems, environments, and/orconfigurations that may be suitable for use with the invention include,but are not limited to, personal computers, server computers, hand-heldor laptop devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based systems,set top boxes, programmable consumer electronics, network PCs,minicomputers, mainframe computers, distributed computing environmentsthat include any of the above systems or devices, and the like.

The invention may be described in the general context ofcomputer-executable instructions, such as program modules, beingexecuted by a computer. Generally, program modules include routines,programs, objects, components, data structures, etc. that performparticular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Theinvention may also be practiced in distributed computing environmentswhere tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linkedthrough a communications network. In a distributed computingenvironment, program modules may be located in both local and remotecomputer storage media including memory storage devices.

With reference to FIG. 2, an exemplary system for implementing theinvention includes a general purpose computing device in the form of acomputer 110. Components of computer 110 may include, but are notlimited to, a processing unit 120, a system memory 130, and a system bus121 that couples various system components including the system memoryto the processing unit 120. The system bus 121 may be any of severaltypes of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, aperipheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of busarchitectures. By way of example, and not limitation, such architecturesinclude Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus, Micro ChannelArchitecture (MCA) bus, Enhanced ISA (EISA) bus, Video ElectronicsStandards Association (VESA) local bus, and Peripheral ComponentInterconnect (PCI) bus also known as Mezzanine bus.

Computer 110 typically includes a variety of computer readable media.Computer readable media can be any available media that can be accessedby computer 110 and includes both volatile and nonvolatile media,removable and non-removable media. By way of example, and notlimitation, computer readable media may comprise computer storage mediaand communication media. Computer storage media includes both volatileand nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in anymethod or technology for storage of information such as computerreadable instructions, data structures, program modules or other data.Computer storage media includes, but is not limited to, RAM, ROM,EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digitalversatile disks (DVD) or other optical disk storage, magnetic cassettes,magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices,or any other medium which can be used to store the desired informationand which can be accessed by computer 100. Communication media typicallyembodies computer readable instructions, data structures, programmodules or other data in a modulated data signal such as a carrier WAVor other transport mechanism and includes any information deliverymedia. The term “modulated data signal” means a signal that has one ormore of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encodeinformation in the signal. By way of example, and not limitation,communication media includes wired media such as a wired network ordirect-wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, FR,infrared and other wireless media. Combinations of any of the aboveshould also be included within the scope of computer readable media.

The system memory 130 includes computer storage media in the form ofvolatile and/or nonvolatile memory such as read only memory (ROM) 131and random access memory (RAM) 132. A basic input/output system 133(BIOS), containing the basic routines that help to transfer informationbetween elements within computer 110, such as during start-up, istypically stored in ROM 131. RAM 132 typically contains data and/orprogram modules that are immediately accessible to and/or presentlybeing operated on by processing unit 120. By way of example, and notlimitation, FIG. 2 illustrates operating system 134, applicationprograms 135, other program modules 136, and program data 137.

The computer 110 may also include other removable/non-removablevolatile/nonvolatile computer storage media. By way of example only,FIG. 2 illustrates a hard disk drive 141 that reads from or writes tonon-removable, nonvolatile magnetic media, a magnetic disk drive 151that reads from or writes to a removable, nonvolatile magnetic disk 152,and an optical disk drive 155 that reads from or writes to a removable,nonvolatile optical disk 156 such as a CD ROM or other optical media.Other removable/non-removable, volatile/nonvolatile computer storagemedia that can be used in the exemplary operating environment include,but are not limited to, magnetic tape cassettes, flash memory cards,digital versatile disks, digital video tape, solid state RAM, solidstate ROM, and the like. The hard disk drive 141 is typically connectedto the system bus 121 through a non-removable memory interface such asinterface 140, and magnetic disk drive 151 and optical disk drive 155are typically connected to the system bus 121 by a removable memoryinterface, such as interface 150.

The drives and their associated computer storage media discussed aboveand illustrated in FIG. 2, provide storage of computer readableinstructions, data structures, program modules and other data for thecomputer 110. In FIG. 2, for example, hard disk drive 141 is illustratedas storing operating system 144, application programs 145, other programmodules 146, and program data 147. Note that these components can eitherbe the same as or different from operating system 134, applicationprograms 135, other program modules 136, and program data 137. Operatingsystem 144, application programs 145, other program modules 146, andprogram data 147 are given different numbers here to illustrate that, ata minimum, they are different copies.

A user may enter commands and information into the computer 110 throughinput devices such as a keyboard 162, a microphone 163, and a pointingdevice 161, such as a mouse, trackball or touch pad. Other input devices(not shown) may include a joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner,or the like. These and other input devices are often connected to theprocessing unit 120 through a user input interface 160 that is coupledto the system bus, but may be connected by other interface and busstructures, such as a parallel port, game port or a universal serial bus(USB). A monitor 191 or other type of display device is also connectedto the system bus 121 via an interface, such as a video interface 190.In addition to the monitor, computers may also include other peripheraloutput devices such as speakers 197 and printer 196, which may beconnected through an output peripheral interface 190.

The computer 110 may operate in a networked environment using logicalconnections to one or more remote computers, such as a remote computer180. The remote computer 180 may be a personal computer, a hand-helddevice, a server, a router, a network PC, a peer device or other commonnetwork node, and typically includes many or all of the elementsdescribed above relative to the computer 110. The logical connectionsdepicted in FIG. 2 include a local area network (LAN) 171 and a widearea network (WAN) 173, but may also include other networks. Suchnetworking environments are commonplace in offices, enterprise-widecomputer networks, intranets and the Internet.

When used in a LAN networking environment, the computer 110 is connectedto the LAN 171 through a network interface or adapter 170. When used ina WAN networking environment, the computer 110 typically includes amodem 172 or other means for establishing communications over the WAN173, such as the Internet. The modem 172, which may be internal orexternal, may be connected to the system bus 121 via the user-inputinterface 160, or other appropriate mechanism. In a networkedenvironment, program modules depicted relative to the computer 110, orportions thereof, may be stored in the remote memory storage device. Byway of example, and not limitation, FIG. 2 illustrates remoteapplication programs 185 as residing on remote computer 180. It will beappreciated that the network connections shown are exemplary and othermeans of establishing a communications link between the computers may beused.

It should be noted that the present invention can be carried out on acomputer system such as that described with respect to FIG. 2. However,the present invention can be carried out on a server, a computer devotedto message handling, or on a distributed system in which differentportions of the present invention are carried out on different parts ofthe distributed computing system.

Criteria Object Model

FIG. 3 shows a UML class diagram implemented by data access system 12.The class diagram shown in FIG. 3 defines what is referred to as acriteria subsystem 200. Criteria subsystem 200 enables users anddevelopers to define criteria, which describe the entity or entitiesbeing queried, updated or deleted; or the entity or entities on whichset operations are being performed. Each of the objects in FIG. 3includes an application programming interface that exposes a variety ofdifferent methods which are described in greater detail in Appendix Ahereto. A number of the features of the various objects, and methodsexposed thereby, are discussed in the body of this description for thesake of clarity.

Object model 200 includes the following classes: Criteria 202,EntityCriteria 204, CriteriaWithOrderBy 206, CollectionCriteria 208,AdHocQueryCriteria 210, EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212, EntityAliasList214, JoinList 216 WhereExpression 218, OrderByList 220, SelectList 222,EntityCollectionType 224 and PropertyAssignmentList 226.

In the diagram shown in FIG. 3, the hollow arrows define an “IS A”relationship. For example, EntityCriteria is a Criteria, andEntitySetUpdateCriteria is also a Criteria. The connectors having adiamond at one end and an open arrow at the other end illustrate thatthe class which is pointed to by the diamond holds a reference to theclass that is pointed to by the open arrow. Thus, the Criteria classholds a reference to the EntityAliasList class. The numerals adjacentthe open arrows indicate the number of references which are held.Therefore, each Criteria class 202 holds a reference to anEntityAliasList 214 and can hold a reference for up to one JoinList 216and WhereExpression 218.

Criteria class 202 is the abstract base class for which each of theconcrete criteria classes (EntityCriteria 204, CollectionCriteria 208,AdHocQueryCriteria 210, and EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212) are derivedeither directly or indirectly. Criteria class 202 holds references toinstances of EntityAliasList 214, JoinList 216 and WhereExpression 218which are exposed through public properties with the same names.

Criteria class 202 also defines a large set of static methods that areused to create Criteria instances and the components that are stored inthem. These are described in greater detail in the Appendix. Theconstructors of all public Criteria classes are internal. This meansthat all users of Criteria 202 must use the static methods of theabstract Criteria class for instance creation. Criteria 202 cannot beinstantiated since it is abstract.

EntityCriteria 204 is used to specify a single entity for retrieval. Itis derived directly from the abstract Criteria 202, and thus inheritsthe EntityAliasList 214 referenced by Criteria 202 as well as theJoinList 216 and WhereExpression 218 properties referenced by Criteria202. An instance of EntityCriteria 214 can be created by creating anEntityKey from which an EntityAliasList 214 and a WhereExpression 218are internally generated, or by providing the instance ofEntityAliasList 214 and WhereExpression 216 directly.

CriteriaWithOrderBy 206 is derived from the abstract Criteria class 202and thus inherits the properties referred to by Criteria 202.CriteriaWithOrderBy 206 holds a reference to an instance of OrderByList220 which is exposed by a public property. CriteriaWithOrderBy 206, aswith criteria 202, cannot be instantiated since it is abstract.

CollectionCriteria 208 is used for the retrieval of a collection ofentities. It is derived from CriteriaWithOrderBy 206, inheriting theEntityAliasList 214, JoinList 216, WhereExpression 218 and OrderByList220 properties of CriteriaWithOrderBy 206 and Criteria 202.CollectionCriteria 208 adds an EntityCollectionType 224 which is exposedas a public property as well.

AdHocQueryCriteria 210 is used for the retrieval of entity data. Itallows the user to combine the data of multiple entities of differenttypes into a single result row with only the properties of interestincluded. The results of an AdHocQueryCriteria 210 query are returned inthe form of a tabular result (or data) set, such as, for example, aMicrosoft ADO.NET DataSet. The AdHocQueryCriteria 210 is derived fromthe abstract CriteriaWithOrderBy 206 class inheriting the propertiesEntityAliasList 214, JoinList 216, WhereExpression 218, and OrderByList220. AdHocQueryCriteria 210 adds a SelectList 222 which is exposed as apublic property. A number of instances of AdHocQueryCriteria 210 aregiven in the Appendix. Also, AdHocQueryCriteria 210 is discussed ingreater detail with respect to FIGS. 5-7 below.

EntityAliasList 214 is used to contain a list of entity aliases (parentkey, entity type pairings) that are used with instances of Criteria 202.The entity alias list associated with an instance of Criteria 202enables data access system 12 to determine which server and database towork with, and which maps 18 to use for mapping entity properties to thedatabase tables and columns. It also allows specifying the same entitywith different names (“aliases”) so that things such as self-joins canbe performed. For EntityCriteria 204, the EntityType indicates the typeof entity to instantiate. For CollectionCriteria 208, it indicates thetype of entities to instantiate and put in a collection. Also, theentity type can be a base type. Therefore, the instances that are putinto the collection may actually be descendents of an indicated entitytype. For all types of Criteria 202 multiple entity aliases can bepassed to the EntityAliases clause upon creation of Criteria 202. Thisallows all types of Criteria 202 to make explicit joins to arbitraryentities.

JoinList 216 is used to contain a list of explicit joins for an instanceof Criteria 202. Each join includes a join type (such as inner, left, orright), a left alias name, a right alias name, and a Boolean expressionthat defines the relationship between the entities involved in the join.

WhereExpression 218 is used to specify the entity of interest. ForCollectionCriteria 208, it is used to specify a set of entities. ForAdHocQueryCriteria 210 it specifies the data rows to retrieve.

OrderByList 220 is used to define the sort order of the collectionretrieved for a CollectionCriteria, or the sort order of the returnedtabular result (or data) set rows for an AdHocQueryCriteria 210. Thelist contained in OrderByList 220 includes a list of properties orselect list aliases. Each of these can be followed by an optional sorttype indicator, such as ascending or descending.

SelectList 222 is used in the AdHocQueryCriteria 210 to define thecolumns that will appear in the resulting data set. A SelectList 222 cancontain properties or expressions and each of these can be followed byan optional alias. An alias acts as an alternate name for the propertyor expression that follows. The aliases can also be used in theOrderByList 220.

EntityCollectType 224 is used to define the container type of acollection of an instance of CollectionCriteria 208. In other words, itdefines the system type of the collection in which the retrievedentities are to be placed.

EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212 is used to update a set of entities. Itallows the user to modify one or more properties of similarlyconstructed entities. The operation is similar to modification of datain one or more columns with respect to a set of rows, and in effect,EntitySetUpdateCriteria accomplishes that purpose in the database.However, instead of referencing in the modification request based oncolumns of the database, referencing is provided by entity properties.

EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212 is derived from the abstract Criteria 202inheriting the properties EntityAliasList 214, JoinList 216 andWhereExpression 218. EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212 adds aPropertyAssignmentList 226, which is exposed as a public property. Anumber of instances of EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212 are given in theAppendix. Also, EntitySetUpdateCriteria is discussed in greater detailwith respect to FIGS. 14-15 below.

Expressions

Current object-relational systems embody query languages that areusually textual. Textual queries have two well-known problems, whichinclude that the syntax of the text is not verified until the query isrun rather than at compile time like most program text, and that thequeries are created through string concatenation. The resultingconcatenated query string is difficult to read, particularly whenexpressions (boolean, arithmetic, relational, etc.) are embodied in thequery.

Expressions are present in many components of object model 200. Forinstance, expressions can be present in JoinList 216, WhereExpression218 and PropertyAssignmentList 226, to name a few. For the same purposethat the properties of the entities are translated by data access system12 to determine a relational database request 32 that is suitable forinput to relational data store mechanism 14 to retrieve the data orperform some other data operation, so too must the expressions used bycriteria 200 be understood and translated to suitable expressions forrelational data store mechanism 14. Generally, as will be explainedbelow, rather than representing a query with text, a query in thepresent system is represented by a parse tree constructed by thedeveloper using an object model. Building an expression with an objectmodel can be cumbersome so, in one embodiment, operator overloading canbe used so that the developer can write or express natural lookingexpressions. A compiler at compile time is used to provide code thatcauses the parse tree to be generated at runtime. In order to accomplishthis task, the compiler must build its own parse tree for theexpression, which consequently has the beneficial effect of validatingthe expressions and ensuring that the code that is provided to build theparse tree will build a well-formed expression. A parse tree for anexpression is a well-understood structure, which can then be used duringtranslation to formulate expressions in the relational database languagesuitable for relational data store mechanism 14.

Generally, expressions comprise one or two operands and an operator.Depending on the operator, unary and binary expressions can be formed. Aunary expression comprises an operator and one operand, while a binaryexpression comprises an operator and two operands, generally denoted asa “left operand” and a “right operand”.

Operator Overloading

Operator overloading is a generally well-known technique used inprogramming languages. All unary and binary operators have predefinedimplementations that are automatically available in any expression. Inaddition to the predefined implementations, user defined implementationscan also be introduced in some programming languages, for example VisualC#™ by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. The mechanism of giving aspecial meaning to a standard operator with respect to a user defineddata type such as classes or structures is known as operatoroverloading.

Generally, operator overloading entails providing a routine for eachuser defined operator. An exemplary call statement (pseudo-code) couldbe as follows:

Operator_+(Left Operand, Right Operand, Result)

where the “Left Operand” and the “Right Operand” are provided as inputto a routine herein identified as “Operator_+”, which returns a“Result”. However, typically operator overloading is used such that theResult obtained is in accordance with execution upon the Left Operandand the Right Operand. In contrast, in the present system, operatingoverloading is not used to operate on the operands, but rather, toobtain the intent of the expression during compile time and deferexecution of the expression. Deferment is required because operatoroverloading is used to provide code to create a parse tree for theexpression, where the parse tree is then translated and actuallyexecuted during run time by the data store mechanism 14.

For example, a parse tree 400 for the expression:((−A+B)>5) AND ((C% 20)==10)is illustrated in FIG. 4A. The system will defer execution by using theoperators, such as the “+” operator, not to provide the code that willadd “−A” and “B”, but rather to provide the code that will create a nodein the parse tree. Likewise, corresponding nodes would be created forvarious forms of terminals in the expression such as “5”, “10”, whichherein are denoted as literals, or “A”, “B”, which would berepresentative of data members such as properties. It should also benoted that the expressions present in Criteria 200 are not parsed by thesystem at run time, but rather are parsed by the compiler at compiletime. In particular, the compiler parses each expression and providescode that calls the predefined operator overloads at the correct timeduring runtime (so that the operator overloads generate pieces of theruntime parse tree), and eventually all the code needed to build acomplete parse tree at runtime has been provided upon the compiler'scompletion of parsing the expression. This technique is particularlyadvantageous because the compiler will inform the developer whenmistakes are present in the expression. In this manner, the developer isforced to correct the expression, thereby avoiding many errantexpressions, which would otherwise only be found during execution of theapplication.

FIG. 4B, illustrates the object model or class hierarchy 420 that isembodied in the operator overloading calls made by the compiler forprocessing an expression. The symbols present in FIG. 4B correspond tothe symbols used in FIG. 3. In particular, the hollow arrows define an“IS A” relationship. For example, a Boolean expression 424, or anArithmetic expression 426 are forms of expressions 428. Likewise, aUnary Arithmetic operator 430 or a Binary Arithmetic operator 432 areeach forms of Arithmetic operators 434, which in turn is a form of theArithmetic expression 426.

The connectors having a diamond at one end and an open arrow at theother end illustrate that the class, which is pointed to by the diamondholds a reference to the class that it is pointed to by the open arrow.The “left” and “right” notations denote the presence of left and rightoperands, respectively. The notation “expression” denotes the expressionupon which the operator operates, while the numeral “1” indicates thatthe corresponding “left operand”, “right operand”, or “expression” isrequired. For example, BoolExpression 424 requires left and rightoperands with a Binary Boolean operator 436 (e.g. AND, OR).

Completing the hierarchy of object model 420, Binary Boolean operator436, Relational operator 438 and Unary Boolean operator 440 are eachforms of Boolean operator 442. Terminal 444, which is a form of anArithmetic expression 426, includes object properties 446 and fields 448through a more general class of Data Member 450. Constants 452 can alsobe part of an expression and in the model of 420 are a form of aTerminal 444. An Arithmetic function 454 (SUM, MAX, MIN, etc.) is also aform of an Arithmetic expression 426.

Since the operator overload calls define specifically how manyparameters must be present and of which type each parameter must be, thecompiler, at compile time, properly evaluates the expression andindicates to the developer when errors are present.

The operator overload calls or methods are defined in the Appendix inaccordance with the object model 420 illustrated in FIG. 4B. Asindicated above, each of the operator overloads provides nodes of thecorresponding parse tree for the parts of and eventually the wholeexpression. Each of the nodes comprises an object with the nodescomprising terminals or operators with connections formed by thepresence of required left, right or unary operands or expressions.Another example may be helpful in further illustrating how a parse treeis formed from an expression.

Given the expression:(Property)“CarItem.Cost”>=15000m &&(Property)“CarItem.Sales”−(Property)“CarItem.Discounts”>1000000m &&(Property)“Dealer.State”==“ND”

According to the object model 420 illustrated in FIG. 4B, thisexpression would form a parse tree 480 illustrated in FIG. 4C. Each boxin FIG. 4C represents an object in memory and the lines representreferences between the objects. Each expression object (i.e. the parsetree) would be assigned to the corresponding component of the Criteriaobject so that it can be accessed during translation. Referring back toFIG. 1, each query or other form of requested operation would havecompletely parsed expressions before the request 30 is even given todata access system 12.

It should be noted that in one embodiment, the compiler applies itsprecedence rules to the operators of the expression that it isevaluating when providing code to make the operator overload calls thatform the runtime parse tree. Thus, again, evaluation of the expressionis performed by the compiler, and in particular, whether to evaluate oneoperator before another operator in a given expression. For example,operators “*” or “/” are commonly evaluated in an expression prior tothe operators “+” or “−”. However, the expression can includeparentheses as required by the developer to ensure desired evaluation orto depart from normal precedence rules. In other words, the compiler isused to perform lexical analysis and enforce well-formed expressions.

It should be also noted that the parse tree is but one form that can beused during translation of the expression. In other embodiments, thecompiler can again be used for purposes of applying precedence inevaluation and enforcing proper expression by checking for the presenceof the required number and type of the operands made with each operatoroverload call, but another form of output such as a text string could beoutputted by the operator overload routine and then evaluated duringtranslation of the query or other requested operation.

Ad Hoc Queries

A number of problems exist with conventional query capabilities inexisting object-relational technologies. For example, complete objectsare returned even when only a small number of attributes or propertiesof an object may be desired. This places unnecessary stress on thesystem. Similarly, since conventional approaches read and write fieldsrather than properties, developers must expose the internalrepresentation of their class to those performing queries. Similarly, inconventional technologies, only a single object is returned unless aparent/child relationship exists. Joins of the sort commonly used inrelational query languages cannot be used to return properties from morethan one entity using conventional object-relational technology.

AdHocQueryCriteria 210 addresses one or more of these problems.AdHocQueryCriteria 210 returns property values based on an input queryand not the entire objects containing those property values. Similarly,it allows the return of data from any number of objects. These featuresare described in greater detail with respect to FIGS. 5-7.

As discussed above, rather than returning an entire object (or “entity”)AdHocQueryCriteria 210 returns only a data set. This can be an enhancedresult set that also contains the metadata for the entity or entitiesfrom which the values were obtained. Therefore, any special processingrequirements associated with an underlying entity can be performed, orthe underlying entity itself can be obtained, when necessary.

An example may be helpful. FIG. 5 illustrates two business objects, orentities, referred to as a “Dealer” entity and a “CarItem” entity. TheDealer entity is indicated by number 500 and the CarItem entity isindicated by number 502. Dealer entity 500 includes a metadata portion504, and a plurality of attributes or properties 506. Properties 506include, by way of example, an identifier (ID), a cost, a city and astate. Dealer entity 500 may, for the sake of this example, represent anautomobile dealer in a business database. Entity 500 is mapped to aDealer_Table 508 in a relational database. Table 508 includes aplurality of columns associated with each of the attributes 506 inentity 500. For example, Attributes 506 are illustratively mapped tocolumns 512 in table 508. The class-table mapping of Dealer entity 500is provided in mapping 514.

Similarly, CarItem 502 includes a metadata field 516 and a plurality ofattributes 518 which include, for example, an ID, and a vehicleidentification number (VIN) property. Entity 502 thus, for example,represents an automobile which is in stock at a given dealer. Entity 502is mapped to a CarItem_Table 520 in a relational database by class_tablemapping 526. Each of the attributes are mapped to columns in table 520.Thus, for example, first attribute attributes 518 are mapped to columns524 in table 520.

An example of AdHocQueryCriteria 210 is shown in FIG. 6. It can be seenthat the first portion of FIG. 6 simply defines the class CarItem whichis stored in the CarItem table 520 in the database. The second portionof FIG. 6 defines the class Dealer 500 which is stored in theDealer_Table 508 in the database. These two business objects (orentities) are mapped to the database by maps 514 and 526, respectively.

Next in FIG. 6 the actual query is stated. The first criteria statementindicates that the query is an AdHocQuery and the followingCriteria.EntityAlias statements identify the objects or entitiesinvolved in the query. The JoinList statement identifies entities thatare joined to other entities in the query. The portion in the boxillustrates the selection of several properties from the entities,rather than the entire entities.

The “Where” statement further defines the specific data to be obtained.It can thus be seen that the two entities involved are the CarItementity and the Dealer entity. The JoinList indicates that an inner joinis performed between CarItem and Dealer where the CarItem ID matches theDealer ID.

The specific properties which are to be retrieved from these entitiesare the car item ID, cost and VIN properties and the dealer ID, city andstate properties.

The Where statement further defines the properties to be retrieved asthose in the CarItem entities where the make is indicated as a “Geo” andthe model is indicated as a “Prism” and where the designated propertiesin the Dealer entity indicate that the dealer is from “ND”.

In order to retrieve this data, data access system 12 first receives thequery. This is indicated by block 530 in FIG. 7. Next, data accesssystem 12 reads the maps 514 and 526 which are related to the entitieslisted in the query. This is indicated by block 532 in FIG. 7. Based onmaps 514 and 526, data access system 12 then identifies columns in theassociated tables that are required to fill the requested properties(those properties requested in the queries). This is indicated by block534 in FIG. 7.

Based on the identified columns, data access system 12 then generates arelational database query 32 (shown in FIG. 1) which is applied againstrelational data store mechanism 14 (also shown in FIG. 1) to retrieveonly the desired columns. Generating the relational database query isindicated by block 536 in FIG. 7.

Data access system 12 then receives the relational database results andtransforms those results into the desired result set. This is indicatedby block 538 in FIG. 7. Recall that it may be desirable to have such aresult set be enhanced to not only include the requested data, but toinclude at least an identity of the source entity from which the datawas retrieved such that any special processing can be performed, or suchthat the entity, itself, can be retrieved in full. Thus, data accesssystem 12 illustratively attaches to the result set information (such asmetadata) necessary to identify the entity containing any property thatis returned in the result set. Of course, metadata is data about fields,properties and classes themselves. For example, metadata about a classincludes its name, type, what properties and methods it contains, etc. .. . This allows programs to learn about, and interact with, instances ofa class at runtime, rather than requiring that knowledge to bepre-recorded in the program. While the metadata is shown as part of theentity in FIG. 1, it is in most embodiments not stored in database 16but is maintained by system 12 instead. This is indicated by block 540.The result set is thus illustratively in terms of property values andproperty names instead of column values and column names. However, theresults are also only the desired data and not the entire object.

Translation

Join Translation

As discussed with respect to FIG. 1, data access system 12 translatesquery 30 into a relational database query 32 which is applied torelational data store mechanism 14. In many instances, the translationis simple and straight forward. However, there are a number of areas inwhich translations can be quite difficult.

For example, there will be times when a developer wishes to join twoobjects by any arbitrary property on those objects. In that case, inquery 30, the developer specifies which properties on either object theywish to join, and can include any arithmetic operators, relationaloperators, Boolean operators, unary operators, etc., as necessary. Indoing so, the developers may express the queries in terms of qualifiedobject references combined with expressions separated by the operators.The qualified object references thus require implicit joins, since thejoins are not explicitly stated. Also, care must be taken so that if anobject is referenced multiple times in an object property joinexpression, and if it has the same qualifier, then only one relationaldatabase join is made to that object's table with the correct joincondition.

Thus, in one embodiment, the query is parsed into a parse tree, asdiscussed above with respect to expressions, and a directed acyclicgraph (DAG) is built from the parse tree. A directed acyclic graph is agraph in which there are no paths to follow that allow the same node tobe visited twice. By building a DAG containing the objects being joined,and their joins to each other, the graph can be traversed in order toproduce the correct joins in the correct order in relation to oneanother.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram illustrating the overall process of translatingjoins. First, a join expression is received. This is indicated by block800. Next, a parse tree is generated from the join expression asindicated at block 802. Generation of parse trees is described ingreater detail above with respect to expressions.

Once the parse tree is generated, translator component 13 in data accesssystem 12 traverses the parse tree in post-fix order to build a directedacyclic graph (DAG) for the parse tree. This is indicated by block 804.Each node of the DAG represents an object within the join expressionthat is mapped to a different row in the relational database. Asmentioned above, there are explicit joins which are specified by thedeveloper. However, there are also implicit joins which are introducedbecause a property reference crosses the boundary between two objectsthat are mapped to different rows by class-table mapping 18 (shown inFIG. 1).

Each node in the DAG created for the parse tree has directed edges toother nodes, each of which refers to an object to which the originalobject joins. The nodes have a unique identity referred to as aqualifier. The qualifier for a node is the object path taken to reachthe object represented by the node. For example, in the property path“Order.Customer.Address.City”, the qualifier for “address” is referencedthrough a customer that is referenced through an order. Therefore, thereare three qualifiers “Order”, “Order.Customer”, and“Order.Customer.Address”. No two nodes in the DAG share the samequalifier.

In order to produce the translated output for the relational database(such as in SQL), and in order to produce the translation of the joinsin the correct order in relation to one another, the DAG is traversed bythe translator component according to the depth of each node. This isindicated by block 806. The depth of a node corresponds to the number ofedges on the longest path between the node and the starting node. Thestarting node is referred to as having a depth 0. The depth of a node isassigned when it is added to the graph, and the depth of the nodes areupdated as necessary (either during creation of the graph or when graphconstruction is complete).

An example will now be discussed to further illustrate the process shownin FIG. 8. In the example, assume that a developer wishes to querydatabase 16 for all orders with the following restrictions:

Either:

There exists a customer of that order whose preferred employee lives inthe same city as the supplier of some item sold by the company;

AND

The date the order occurred was after the discontinued date of the itemsold by the company;

OR

There exists a customer of that order who lives in the same city as thewarehouse where an item sold by the company is located.

An object property join expression that represents this type of Criteriacan be represented by the following:((Order.Customer.PreferredEmployee.City==Item.Supplier.City) AND(Order.OrderDate<Item.DiscontinuedDate)) OR(Order.Customer.City==Item.Warehouse.City)

FIG. 9 illustrates a parse tree 808 generated from this join expression.It can be seen that each of the leaves of the parse tree correspond toproperties in the join expression, while each of the ancestor nodes (orinternal nodes) corresponds to an operator.

In accordance with one embodiment, parse tree 808 is walked in post-fixorder and a DAG is built for it. By post-fix order, it is meant that thetree is traversed in depth first order and a node is processed after itschild nodes are visited. The post-fix order in which the tree is walkedcorresponds to the numerals adjacent each node in the tree. Thus, it canbe seen that the first node processed is the lowest and left-most nodein tree 808.

FIGS. 10A-10C represent a flow diagram that better illustratestraversing parse tree 808 to build a DAG corresponding to tree 808.These operations are carried out by the translation component 13 in dataaccess system 12 (shown in FIG. 1).

It is first determined whether the node currently being processedcorresponds to a property path. This is indicated by block 820. Ofcourse, node 1 in parse tree 808 (the first node encountered) is aproperty path “Order.Customer.PreferredEmployee. City”. Thus, thetranslator component creates an empty DAG. This is indicated by block822 in FIG. 10A.

Having created an empty DAG and pushed it on a DAG stack, the translatorcomponent 13 selects an entity from the property path. This is indicatedby block 824. If the entity chosen is the first entity on the currentside of the operator (in this example on the left side of the “==”operator designated by node 3 in tree 808), then the translatorcomponent 13 must identify a starting node in the DAG it is about tobegin creating for tree 808. Determining whether the encountered entityis the first entity on this side of the operator is indicated by block826.

To designate a starting node in the DAG, the translator component 13determines whether the node being processed is on the left side or rightside of the operator in tree 808. This is indicated by block 828. If theentity is on the left side of the operator, then the starting node inthe DAG is created as the first (left-most) entity in the property pathbeing processed. This is indicated by block 830.

However, if the entity is on the right side of the operator, then thestarting node in the DAG is created beginning with the last (right-most)entity in the property path. This is indicated by block 832. Thisreverse ordering on the right side of the operator can be understood ifthe difference between the object and database domains is examined moreclosely. From an object standpoint, the expression“Order.Customer.Preferred Employee.City==Item.Supplier.City” shows thatthe Order object is linked to the Item object by way of qualified objectreferences. However, from a database standpoint, the Order table isnever directly joined to the Item table. In fact, not even the Employeetable is directly joined to the Item table. From a physical databasetable view, therefore, the only way to start from the Order table andarrive at the Item table is to join the tables in the following way“Order_Table To Customer_Table To Employee_Table To Supplier_Table ToItem_Table”. In other words, the only way to get from an order to anitem is through a supplier. Thus, joins on the right hand side of anexpression are done in the reverse order that they are referenced in theproperty path.

Assuming, therefore, that the property path corresponding to the firstnode in parse tree 808 is being processed, and assuming that the firstnode in the DAG is being created, the entity chosen is the “Order”entity. This corresponds to the first node in the DAG, and is indicatedby node 834 in FIG. 11A.

Having identified the “Order” entity as the first node in the DAG, thetranslator determines whether any additional entity nodes remain in thisproperty path which must be processed. This is indicated by block 836 inFIG. 10A. If so, the next entity from the property path is selected atblock 824 and it is again determined whether this is the first entity onthis side of the operator at block 826. Of course, since the “Order”entity has already been processed on this side of the operator in tree808, the next entity to be processed will be the “Customer” entity. Thisis not the first entity on the left side of the operator in tree 808 andtherefore processing will continue at block 836.

With the “Customer” entity a node will be created with the join type“inner” and the node for the “Customer” entity will be linked to theprevious node in the path, and the join expression associated with thatnode will be set to describe its relationship to the previous entitynode. FIG. 11B illustrates this in greater detail. It can be seen thatthe starting node 834 in the DAG has already been created. The next nodecreated is the customer node 840. It can be seen from FIG. 11B that thecustomer node 840 has been created and provided with a join type “inner”and it has also been connected to the previous node (the “Order” node834). This is indicated by the arrow between the two nodes. Similarly,it can be seen that the expression corresponding to node 840 has beenset.

The join between the “Order” and “Customer” nodes represents theimplicit join through qualified object references between the “Order”and “Customer” entities. The reason that this is designated as an“inner” join is because the order must have a customer for the desiredjoin requirement to be true. The join expression is provided by thedeveloper and resides in class-table mapping 18. For example, thedeveloper will illustratively provide join expressions indicating howany given entity is to join to ancestor nodes (those further up the treein a DAG). This information is stored in the class-table mapping.Therefore, when the translator determines that an entity is to be joinedto a previous entity in a DAG, it simply reads the corresponding joinexpression from the class-table mapping 18 (shown in FIG. 1) and assignsthat as the join expression for that node in the DAG.

Having created both the starting node 834 and the subsequent node 840 inthe DAG (shown in FIG. 11B) it is then determined whether there are anyadditional entity nodes in this property path, again at block 838. Ofcourse, with respect to node one in parse tree 808 shown in FIG. 9,there is an additional entity in the property path, (i.e., the“PreferredEmployee” node). Since this is not the beginning node,processing proceeds to block 836 where a node in the DAG correspondingto this property path is created for the “PreferredEmployee” entity.This is shown in FIG. 11C as node 842.

Node 842 is again connected to the previous node 840 and the joinexpression corresponding to node 842 is set to describe its relationshipto the previous entity node 840. Again, the join type is set to “inner”because this is an implicit join, and the join expression is simply readfrom the class-table mapping 18.

Processing then again proceeds to block 838 where it is determined thatthere are no additional entity nodes to process in this property path.Therefore, the translator pushes the property from the present path ontoa property stack, and the DAG just constructed is pushed onto a DAGstack. This is indicated by block 150.

The property and DAG stacks are better illustrated in FIG. 11D. In theembodiment illustrated, DAG stack 852 and property stack 854 arefirst-in-last-out stores. The DAG placed on DAG stack 852 is the DAGcorresponding to the expression which is on the left side of theoperator node three of parse tree 808. The DAG is thus referred to asthe “left DAG”.

Thus, to this point, FIG. 10 has illustrated how property paths areprocessed into DAGS. This will be done for each of the property pathsindicated by the leaf nodes of parse tree 808. Therefore, the“Item.Supplier.City” property path corresponding to node two in tree 808will also be processed in this fashion.

One area of difference should be noted. When node two in tree 808 isencountered, again with respect to FIG. 10, block 820 will indicate thata property path has been encountered and at block 822, the translatorwill create an empty DAG and push it onto the DAG stack. Then, the firstentity in the property path “Item.Supplier.City” will be selected asshown in block 824 and it will be determined that it is the first entityon the right hand side of the expression designated in node 3 of tree808. Thus, in block 832, the first node in the DAG for this propertypath will be created as the last (right-most) entity in the path (i.e.,the “Supplier” entity). Thus, the first node in the DAG is illustratedin FIG. 11E and that node 856 corresponds to the Supplier entity.

The next entity chosen will be the “Item” Entity which will be processedat block 836 of FIG. 10A. Thus, the next node will be created (node 858in FIG. 11F) and it will be linked to the previous node (node 856). Thejoin type will be set to “inner” and the expression describing itsrelationship to the previous entity node will also be set. This is allillustrated in FIG. 11F.

FIG. 11F also shows the complete DAG for the expression on the righthand side of the relational operator indicated by node three in tree808. It is thus referred to as the “right DAG”. Since the DAG has beencompletely formed for that property path, it will be pushed onto the DAGstack as will its associated property (the “Supplier.City” property) asindicated at block 850 in FIG. 10A. This is illustrated in FIG. 11Gwhich shows that DAG stack 852 now not only contains the left DAG whichwas originally pushed onto the stack, but it also contains the right DAGwhich was subsequently pushed onto the stack. Similarly, the propertystack 854 contains not only the left property corresponding to the leftDAG, but the right property corresponding to the right DAG as well.

Once the two property paths indicated by nodes one and two in the treehave been processed, processing will continue with respect to nodethree, since both sides of that relational operator have been computedat a lower depth. Therefore, processing proceeds from block 850 to block870 where the translator determines whether the next node encountered inparse tree 808 is a relational operator. Of course, the identityoperator illustrated by node three in tree 808 is a relational operatorand therefor processing will move to block 872 in FIG. 10B.

In accordance with block 872, both DAGS in DAG stack 852 (whichcorrespond to the left and right sides of the relational operator) arepopped off of DAG stack 852. The last node from the left side DAG isthen connected to the first node of the right side DAG. This isindicated by block 874 and is also better illustrated in FIG. 12.

It can be seen in FIG. 12 that the nodes O-C-E represent the left sideDAG while the nodes S-I represent the right side DAG. The last node inthe left DAG (the E-node) is connected to the first node in the rightDAG (the S-node). However, this leaves additional work to be performed.

It can be seen from FIG. 11F that the S-node 856 has no join type orexpression associated with it, since it was the first node in a DAG. Itis no longer the first node in a DAG as shown in FIG. 12. Therefore, thejoin type and the join expression must be generated for the node. Sincethe join represented by the relational operator is an explicit join, thejoin type is simply set to that specified by the developer. This isindicated by block 876.

In order to set the expression associated with the join, the twoexpressions are popped off of the property stack 854 and are joined bythe relational operator. Therefore, the join expression corresponding tothe S-node in the DAG shown in FIG. 12 becomes“Employee.City==Supplier.City”. The DAG is then pushed back onto the DAGstack as is its associated property. Setting the join expression andpushing the DAGS back onto the stack is indicated by block 878 in FIG.10B.

Other types of operators may be encountered in a parse tree as well.While no mathematical operators are illustrated in the examples shown inFIG. 9, a mathematical operator may be encountered. If so, this ishandled by the processing section beginning at block 888. In accordancewith one embodiment, a mathematical expression can only be appliedagainst two properties that are in the same object (or entity).Therefore, if a mathematical expression is encountered as indicated atblock 880, then The DAGs corresponding to the two-sides of the operatorare popped off the stack, connected and the single DAG is pushed back onthe stack. This is indicated by block 881. The properties correspondingto the expressions on both sides of the mathematical operator are poppedfrom the property stack. This is indicated by block 882.

The property assigned to the node for the entity under consideration inthe DAG stack is set by joining the left property and the right propertyby the operator. This is indicated by block 884. For example, assumethat a DAG has been generated for a property path “Customer.Order.Tax”and for another property path “Customer.Order.Subtotal”. Assume furtherthat those two property paths are joined in their parse tree by themathematical operator “+”. When that mathematical operator isencountered, the property associated with the entity will be“Order.Tax+Order.Subtotal”. The new property is then put back on theproperty stack as illustrated by block 886.

Still other operators may be encountered. A unary operator is handled bythe processing beginning at block 890. If a unary operator isencountered as illustrated by block 890, the property associated withthat property path is popped from the property stack and the unaryoperator is prepended to the property and the property is then pushedback on the property stack. This is indicated by blocks 894, 896, and898.

If a Boolean operator is encountered, this is handled by the processingbeginning at block 906. Merging DAGS on a Boolean expression will bedescribed with respect to FIGS. 10 and 13. In sum, each side of aBoolean expression has its own corresponding tree and thus has its owncorresponding DAG. When a Boolean operator is encountered whileprocessing a property join expression, the two trees (representing thetwo operands of the Boolean expression) are merged together.

FIG. 13 illustrates the process of building and joining DAGS thatrepresent the objects involved in the exemplary join expression. Theexpression text in bold at the top of each DAG is the expression fromthe object query that the DAG represents. The non-bold text along sideeach node of the DAG indicates the join expression that joins theprevious node to it. For example, the upper portion of FIG. 13 showsthat DAGS 920 and 922 are joined by the Boolean operator “AND”. Thiscorresponds to node seven in parse tree 808 in FIG. 9.

In order to join these DAGS, and referring again to FIG. 10C, the twoDAGS 920 and 922 corresponding to the Boolean operator “AND” are poppedoff of the DAG stack. This is indicated by block 924. One of these DAGS(either 920 or 922) is designated as the merging DAG and the other isdesignated as the merged DAG. It does not matter which is designated asthe merging or merged DAG, but for the purposes of this discussion, themerged DAG will be the one containing the DAG that results from themerge. Designating the DAGS is indicated by block 926.

Next, the DAGS 920 and 922 are scanned for matching nodes. By matchingit is meant that the nodes have the same entity qualifier. This isindicated by block 928.

If matching nodes are located, and they have the same identical joinexpression then the nodes are not merged, but instead the node in themerging DAG is simply ignored. This is done in order to avoid duplicatejoin expressions. This is indicated by block 930.

If matching nodes are found with different join expressions, then thenodes are merged together and the join expressions are merged with theBoolean operator so that the merging join expression and the merged joinexpression are connected by the Boolean operator as follows <mergingjoin expression> <Boolean operator> <merged join expression>. Mergingnodes and expressions in this fashion is indicated by block 932.

For example, the “Item” node of DAG 920 is merged with the “Item” nodeof DAG 922. The resulting node shown in DAG 950 has the join expression“Item.Supplier.ID==Supplier.ID” merged with the join expression“Order.OrderDate<Item.DiscontinuedDate” to result in a merged expression“(Item.Supplier.ID==Supplier.ID) AND(Order.OrderDate<Item.DiscontinuedDate)”.

Similarly, FIG. 13 shows that DAGS 952 and 950 are joined by an ORexpression to obtain the final DAG 954. It can be seen that the “Order”nodes and the “Customer” nodes are identical and the nodes on the rightside (the “merging” nodes) are therefore ignored. Similarly, the “Item”nodes are merged and their corresponding expressions are joined by the“OR” expression shown in DAG 954.

Sometimes, no matching node is found for one or more of the nodes ineither the merged or merging DAGS. If that is the case, it is handled byprocessing at block 934 in FIG. 10C. If no matching node is found, alink is created to that node from the node having a qualifier one levelhigher than the qualifier under consideration. This can be seen withrespect to node W in DAG 952. There is no matching node in DAG 950.Therefore, a link is created to node W from node C, which has aqualifier one level higher than node W. Of course, node W is connectedto node I and is therefore connected to that node in the resultantmerged DAG 954 as well.

Once the final DAG has been generated, the depth of each node in the DAGis updated. This is indicated by the numerals adjacent each node infinal DAG 954. It is also illustrated by block 936 in FIG. 10C. It canbe seen that there are three paths between the first node in DAG 954 andthe final node. The depth corresponding to the final node is that whichcorresponds to the longest path between the first node and the finalnode in DAG 954. Therefore, the depth associated with node I is foureven though one of the paths to node I comes directly from node O.

With the node depth thus updated, the merged DAG 954 is pushed back ontothe DAG stack. This is indicated by block 938 in FIG. 10C.

If, at block 906, no operator has been encountered, then the translatordetermines whether there are anymore nodes in the parse tree 808 to beprocessed. This is indicated by block 940. If so, then the translatormoves to the next position in the parse tree, again moving in post-fixorder. This is indicated by block 942. Once all of the nodes in theparse tree have been processed, DAG processing is complete as indicatedby block 944.

Having generated the final DAG for the parse tree, the DAG is traversedbeginning at depth 0 (i.e., the starting node). All nodes with the depthone greater than the current node are processed and their join data isoutput. It can be seen that implicit joins are illustratively alwaysemitted as inner joins, while explicit joins are inner, left, outer, orright outer joins, as defined by the developers specifying the joins.This process is continued, incrementing the depth to be searched in theDAG each time until the ending node is reached. There is only one endingnode and it represents the final node for purposes of join translationswith respect to this expression.

To complete the above example, the following is an illustrative outputfrom the translator of an SQL FROM clause:

FROM Order TBL

INNER JOIN CustomerTbl ON

OrderTbl.CustomerID=CustomerTbl.ID

INNER JOIN Warehouse Tbl ON

CustomerTbl.City=WarehouseTbl.City

INNER JOIN EmployeeTbl ON

CustomerTbl.PreferredEmployeeID=EmployeeTbl.ID

INNER JOIN SupplierTbl ON

EmployeeTbl.City=SupplierTbl.City

INNER JOIN ItemTbl ON

((SupplierTbl.ID=ItemTbl.SupplierID) AND

(OrderTbl.OrderDate>

ItemTbl.DiscontinuedDate)) OR

(WarehouseTbl.ID=ItemTbl.WarehouseID)

The first Join in the from clause “Inner Join CustomerTbl ON . . . ”represents the implicit Join through qualified object references betweenthe “Order” and “Customer”. The reason it is an Inner Join is becausethe Order must have a Customer for the desired Join requirement to betrue.

The second Join “Inner Join WarehouseTbl ON . . . ” represents theexplicit Join defined in the property Join expression between thecustomer and warehouse. The Inner Join type used for this Join issupplied by the developer along with the property join expression.

The third Join “Inner Join EmployeeTbl ON . . . ” represents theimplicit Join through qualified object references between the “Customer”and “Employee”.

The fourth Join “Inner Join SupplierTbl ON . . . ” represents theexplicit Join defined in the property join expression between the“Employee” and “Supplier”.

The fifth Join “Inner Join ItemTbl ON . . . ” represents all implicitJoins through qualified object references as well as explicit Joinsdefined in the property join expression. It is an Inner Join exclusivelybecause the Inner Join type is supplied by the developer. Itillustratively cannot be a left Join because it would contradict thesemantics requested by the developer.

It can thus be seen that this aspect of the system provides translationof object Joins to relational database Joins, in the proper order evenwhere the object Joins are extremely complex.

Translation of Queries with Inheritance

Another area where translation is not straightforward is for aninheritance hierarchy. Objects in an inheritance hierarchy may be mappedto more than one table in the relational database, making a directtranslation from an object query to an equivalent SQL query quitedifficult. Each row in the SQL result must represent all of the datanecessary to create and fill a single object.

Some difficulties which present themselves include creating the properjoins between the tables to which each class in the inheritancehierarchy is mapped (especially if there is more than one). Alsoproblematic are polymorphic queries, which are queries given against abase class wherein data necessary to create and fill objects in responseto the query require obtaining data from a descendent class type.Sorting the results according to the user's request is difficult aswell. Similarly, once the data is retrieved, determining the type (orclass) of the data in each row of the result set so that an object ofthe proper type may be returned can cause problems.

A number of examples may be helpful. FIG. 14 is a UML diagramillustrating an inheritance hierarchy in which each of the entities is aconcrete entity and each is mapped to its own table. In the specificexample illustrated, the SalesDoc entity and each of its descendententities are concrete, again meaning that instances of the class may becreated. This is in contrast to abstract classes, which cannot beinstantiated. The SalesDoc maps to the SalesDocTbl. Each descendent alsostores its SalesDoc data in the SalesDocTbl and also has its ownseparate table just for those properties unique to it. Querying for allSalesDoc objects may return an instance of any of the four concreteclasses: SalesDoc, Order, Invoice or Quote.

Another scenario in which translation of an inheritance entity can bedifficult is illustrated in FIG. 15. A number of the items in FIG. 15are similar to those shown in FIG. 14. However, in FIG. 15, the SalesDocentity is abstract and each of its descendents are concrete. TheSalesDoc data is stored in each descendent's table. That is, theSalesDoc data is stored in the OrderTbl, the InvoiceTbl and theQuoteTbl.

Yet another scenario which can be problematic is shown in FIG. 16. Inthat Figure, the SalesDoc and each of its descendents are concrete. TheSalesDoc and each of its descendents store their data in theSalesDocTbl. A type indicator specified in the O-R mapping providesinformation about a column in the table and distinguishes one type fromanother.

In order to handle all of these, and other scenarios (such as anarbitrary combination of these three scenarios), one embodiment of thetranslation algorithm translates queries on objects that includeinheritance by using a tree structure having nodes referred to herein as“entity groups”. The entities in these groups may also be referred to,in this context, as “classes”. The algorithm first generates the entitygroup tree and then processes (or traverses) the tree in order totranslate the queries into SQL. This is described in greater detail withrespect to FIG. 18, which is a flow diagram illustrating translation ofan object query which involves objects that have inheritance.

First, the translator component 13 receives the object query. This isindicated by block 1050 in FIG. 18. Next, the translator creates aninitial entity group tree with nodes corresponding one-to-one withclasses in the inheritance hierarchy.

An example of such an initial tree is shown in FIG. 17. The initial treein FIG. 17 includes nine classes, of which classes 1, 6, 7, 8, and 9 areconcrete classes and the remaining are abstract classes. FIG. 17 alsoillustrates tables to which each of the classes are mapped. In order tocreate the initial tree shown in FIG. 17, the query will identify theentity in the inheritance hierarchy for which data is sought. Thetranslator creates the initial tree whose nodes correspond one-to-onewith classes in the inheritance hierarchy. All ancestors and alldescendents of the entity being queried are placed in the tree.

The content of the nodes in the tree includes a class list thatinitially contains the class at the corresponding position in theinheritance hierarchy, but may contain several classes, if they map tothe same table. The node also includes a table that is the table fromthe O-R mapping for that class, if any, and the child nodes correspondto descendents of the class in the inheritance hierarchy, if any. Theinitial tree illustrated in FIG. 17 is then traversed by the translator13.

In traversing the tree, the translator groups entities that share thesame table in the inheritance hierarchy. This is indicated by block 1054in FIG. 18 and is further illustrated by the flow diagram in FIG. 18-1.The tree is traversed in prefix order and is reduced. By prefix order ismeant that the tree is traversed beginning at the top and descending allthe way down the first branch before processing other branches andprocessing a parent node prior to processing any of its descendents. Forexample, a first node is chosen as the current node. The translatordetermines whether the current node has the same table as any childnodes. This is indicated by block 1060 in FIG. 18-1. If so, then thechild node is merged into the parent node as indicated by block 1062.

In order to merge the two nodes, the child node is removed from theparent's child node list, and the child's class list is copied to itsparent's class list. The child's child node list is also copied to theparent's child node list.

An example of this type of merge is illustrated by classes 2, 4 and 5 inFIG. 17. It can be seen that class 2 is the parent of classes 4 and 5,but the descendent classes 4 and 5 share the same table (Table B) asclass 2. Therefore, the children nodes (class 4 and class 5) are mergedinto the parent node (class 2).

Once the child nodes of the current node have been merged into theparent, if required, then the translator 13 determines whether anychildren of the current node share the same table. This is indicated byblock 1064 in FIG. 18-1. If so, those children are merged with oneanother. An example of this is also shown in FIG. 17. Classes 8 and 9are children of class 5, and share the same table, Table C. Thus, whenthe node corresponding to class 5 is being processed, classes 8 and 9are merged together. Merging the nodes is indicated by block 1066 inFIG. 18-1.

In order to merge the two child nodes, both children are removed fromthe parent's child class list. A new node is created whose class list isthe aggregate of the two children, and the new node is added to thechild node list of the parent.

If any of the changes to the initial entity group tree have changed theprocessing in the previous blocks, then processing reverts back to block1060. For example, certain nodes may be merged together, which wouldchange the answers to the questions posed in blocks 1060 and 1064. Ifthat is the case, processing reverts back to those blocks so that thenodes can be appropriately merged. This is indicated by block 1068 inFIG. 18-1, and continues until the tree structure stabilizes.

Once all of the merges have been conducted, then the columns for eachentity in the present entity group (the current node) are added to thelist of selected columns. This is indicated by block 1070 in FIG. 18-1.

At this point in the processing, the entity group tree will be complete.An example of an entity group tree for the inheritance hierarchy shownin FIG. 17 is illustrated in FIG. 19. It can be seen that each of theclasses has its own entity group except for classes 2, 4 and 5, all ofwhich share the same table, and classes 8 and 9, both of which share thesame table as well.

Another example of a inheritance hierarchy which can be processed intoan entity group tree is shown in FIG. 20. FIG. 20 illustrates thatclasses 11, 12 and 13 do not have a table, but that classes 14 and 17both share Table B, while classes 15 and 16 share Table A.

FIG. 21 illustrates the entity group tree formed in accordance with oneembodiment of the present algorithm based on the inheritance hierarchyshown in FIG. 20. FIG. 21 illustrates that classes 11, 12 and 13 havebeen grouped together into an entity group because none of them have atable, entities 14 and 17 are grouped together because they share TableB, and entities 15 and 16 are grouped together into an entity groupbecause they share Table A.

Returning again to where processing left off in FIG. 18, once theentities have been grouped together to form the entity tree, the nodesof the tree are processed to build a query statement for each concreteentity, and that query statement is saved on a statement list. This isindicated by block 1072 in FIG. 18. If more than one statement exists,then they are converted into one statement by placing the “UNION”operator between them. This is indicated by block 1074. The statement isthen ordered and executed and the type indicator is used to determinewhich entity type to create during materialization (after the queryresults have been returned). This is indicated by blocks 1076 and 1078in FIG. 18.

FIG. 18-2 illustrates processing the nodes of the entity group tree(illustrated by block 1072 in FIG. 18) in greater detail. First, thetranslator 13 determines whether more than one query is involved.

This is because once the query is executed against the database, a largenumber of rows may be returned. The system needs to know which class thesearch result is for. When a “UNION” operator is involved, that meansthat there is more than one concrete class which is being queried. Thus,a new column is introduced into the select statement. In one embodiment,the column is simply a number that tells which select statement is beingreferred to in the result set. Therefore, when a row is returned in theresult set, it provides this number so that the translator can determinethat this portion of the result set corresponds to a similarlyidentified select statement which will, in turn, identify the entitythat was queried for this information. This number is referred to as thesynthesized type indicator.

If the translator determines that only a single query is involved, thenthe synthesized type indicator column is omitted from the query. This isindicated by blocks 1100 and 1102 in FIG. 18-2. However, if, at block1100 it is determined that more than one query exists, then a querynumber is specified as a literal and placed in the synthesized typeindicator. This is indicated by block 1104. This is also illustrated ingreater detail in Table 1 below.

TABLE 1 --SalesDoc Query SELECT 0 AS EntityType, sd.*, null, null, nullFROM SalesDocTbl AS sd LEFT JOIN OrderTbl as o ON (sd.SalesDocID =o.SalesDocID) LEFT JOIN InvoiceTbl as i ON (sd.SalesDocID =i.SalesDocID) LEFT JOIN QuoteTbl as q ON (sd.SalesDocID = q.SalesDocID)WHERE o.SalesDocID IS NULL AND i.SalesDocID IS NULL AND q.SalesDocID ISNULL UNION --Order Query SELECT 1 AS EntityType, null, o.*, null, nullFROM SalesDocTbl AS sd INNER JOIN OrderTbl AS o ON sd.SalesDocID =o.SalesDocID UNION --Invoice Query SELECT 2 AS EntityType, null, null,i.*, null FROM SalesDocTbl AS sd INNER JOIN InvoiceTbl AS i ONsd.SalesDocID = i.SalesDocID UNION --Quote Query SELECT 3 AS EntityType,null, null, null, q.* FROM SalesDocTbl AS sd INNER JOIN QuoteTbl AS q ONsd.SalesDocID = q.SalesDocID

For example, Table 1 illustrates the SQL query results for theinheritance hierarchy illustrated in FIG. 14. It can be seen that thefirst query is to the SalesDoc entity. The numeral immediately followingthe word “select” is in the synthesized type indicator column. Sincethis is the first query, the synthesized type indicator is set tonumeral 0. It can also be seen that there is more than one queryinvolved, since there is more than one concrete class in the inheritancehierarchy. The column alias given for the synthesized type indicator is“EntityType”.

Next, having assigned a synthesized type indicator, if necessary, thelist of columns selected in the present node is added to the select listin the query. This is indicated by block 1106 in FIG. 18-2. This canalso be seen by the select list which follows the word “EntityType” inthe SalesDoc query in Table 1. The select list is specified in shorthandas “sd.*,null, null, null.” This indicates that all columns in the sd(SalesDocTbl) table are to be retrieved. The “null” indicators are setfor the columns of the three classes not being queried. The queries areconnected together by the “UNION” operator, and the number and types ofthe columns in selected lists of each statement must be the same.Therefore, the “null” value is set for the non-queried classes to ensurethat the statement has the same number of columns as the otherstatements in the UNIONs.

Next, the table from the least derived entity that has a table is addedto the “FROM” clause. This is indicated by block 1108 in FIG. 18-2. The“least derived” entity is the entity furthest up in the inheritancehierarchy. In the example illustrated in FIG. 1, the SalesDoc entity isthe least derived entity and its table is thus added to the “FROM”clause.

A join is then added between each of the entity group ancestors thathave a table. The join is added on the primary key columns as specifiedin the O-R mapping. This is indicated by block 1110 in FIG. 18-2. Thiscan also be seen in the example illustrated in Table 1. It should alsobe noted that the join used to join the table for a base class to thetable for a descendent class is specified in the O-R mapping for thedescendent class.

Next, restrictions provided by the user are added to the Where clause.This is indicated by block 1112 in FIG. 18-2. Again, Table 1 illustratesa number of restrictions that have been placed in the Where clause. Whenthese restrictions are added, the restrictions are enclosed inparentheses and separated from other restrictions with the Boolean “AND”operator, if necessary.

Having added restrictions specified by the user, restrictions specifiedby the algorithm are next added to the Where clause. Therefore, the typeindicator restrictions are separated for each concrete entity, with an“OR” statement. The result of joining the restrictions with an ORstatement is placed in parentheses and added to the Where clause aswell, separated by the “AND” operator, if necessary. This is indicatedby block 1114.

In order to obtain the type indicator restriction for each concreteentity, the translator traverses up the inheritance hierarchy from thepresent entity and adds the type indicator for each abstract entityseparated by Boolean AND operators. Also, a developer can specify in theO-R map whether a type indicator on a concrete entity applies to derivedentities, in which case such type indicators are also added.

If the query specifies a concrete entity that has descendents in adifferent table, then a left join is introduced to each of thedescendent group tables, and a check is added to the “Where” clause forthe null primary key for each descendent group's table.

Finally, the completed query statement is saved on a statement list asindicated by block 1116.

By applying this algorithm to the inheritance hierarchy illustrated inFIG. 14, it can be seen that the query for the SalesDoc entity needs tobe careful not to return the SalesDoc data for any of its descendententities. This is achieved, as described above, by left joining to thedescendent table and only returning those rows where the descendenttables key field are null (meaning that no data is returned for them).

While each row contains data for an instance of just one class, the SQLquery results may have several rows and thus contain any one or all ofthe classes in the inheritance hierarchy. The additional column havingthe alias EntityType (the synthesized type indicators) is alwaysselected. As discussed above, it is assigned a constant value thatindicates which of the queries in the UNION set produced a given row.

By way of further example, Table 2 shows a translated query for theinheritance hierarchy shown in FIG. 15, and Table 3 shows the query forthe inheritance hierarchy shown in FIG. 16.

TABLE 2 --Order Query SELECT 0 AS EntityType, o.*, null, null FROMOrderTbl AS o UNION --Invoice Query SELECT 1 AS EntityType, null, i.*,null FROM InvoiceTbl AS i UNION --Quote Query SELECT 2 AS EntityType,null, null, q.* FROM QuoteTbl AS q

TABLE 3 -- Query SELECT sd.TypeDiscriminator, * FROM SalesDocTbl AS sd

In the scenario exhibited in FIG. 16, instances of all four classes arein the same SQL table. Therefore, only one SQL query is generated toread the data.

Also, since all four classes are mapped to the same table, this meansthat the developer has already (in the schema for example) indicatedthat the table for the classes will be the same. Thus, the developermust know which type is in the result set. Therefore, the developer musthave added a type indicator into the table. It should also be noted thatthe developer can use as many type indicators as is desired. Since thetype indicator is already in the table, the entity type column is notneeded.

The present system must also formulate the select statements so thatthey are compatible with one another. In other words, in SQL, there is arestriction on the “UNION” operator. Select statements can only becombined by this operator if they have the same number and type. Forexample, a select statement:

Select A, B, C and D

can be joined by the operator “UNION” with a select statement:

Select E, F, G and H

Because both have four items in the select list, so long as the datatype A is the same the data type E, the type B is the same as the typeF, the type C is the same as the type G and the type D is the same asthe type H. In other words, the data types in the select list may be“string”, “integer”, etc. So long as the number of items and the typesin the same positions in the select list are the same, the selectstatements can be joined by the UNION operator.

Result Set Format

It can be seen that when a request is made to retrieve an entity, therequest is translated into a SQL select statement which is sent to therelational database store mechanism 14. Store mechanism 14 returns aresult set in response to the query. The result set is then processed bydata access system 12, and the appropriate entities are created based onknowledge of the original request and data found in the result set.

In order for this to work properly, the query's select list must beconstructed such that it produces a structure in the result set that isrecognizable by the data accessing system 12. The structure, along withknowledge of the original query (the metadata generated duringpreparation of the query) allows entity instances to be created from theresult set data. If the result set does not arrive in a predictablestructure, it is no more than a set of ordinary database columns.However, if the predictable structure is present, an entity graph can becreated from the result set.

FIG. 22 is a flow diagram illustrating how the select list can beconstructed such that it defines the structure of an expected result setfor data accessing system 12. It can be seen from the followingdescription that the metadata that reflects the structure of the resultset is created while the select list is being constructed. Specificconstruction of the metadata is not shown since it can be implemented inone of a wide variety of forms. For purposes of the present discussion,it is sufficient to understand that the structure of the result set isrepresented in some form of metadata which is used later to translatethe result set data into an entity instance, and the particular formwhich the metadata takes is not important.

First, an entity which is being queried is selected. This is indicatedby block 1120 in FIG. 22. Next, the columns that represent the keyproperties in the entity are added to the select list. This is indicatedby block 1122.

The translator then determines whether the present entity is one withinheritance or is a collection. This is indicated by block 1124. If not,then the property column adding algorithm illustrated in FIG. 23 isperformed as indicated by block 1126.

However, if at block 1124 it is determined that the present entitycontains inheritance or is a collection, then all entities from thebase-most (least derived) entity of the entity being queried all the waythrough its descendents are identified, any type indicators specifiedfor the entity in the O-R map are added and the key columns are added.This is indicated by block 1128.

Having identified all of the entities, the algorithm illustrated in FIG.23 which performs property column addition to the select list, is, foreach entity in turn, performed for each of the identified entity'sdeclared (non-inherited) properties. This is indicated by block 1130.

The property column adding operations performed by the translator areillustrated by the flow diagram in FIG. 23. First, for the currententity, a property of the entity is selected. This is indicated by block1132. The translator then determines whether the selected propertyrepresents an array, struct or class that is not an entity. This isindicated by block 1134. If so, then the property column addingalgorithm illustrated by FIG. 23 is performed for each property orelement in the array, struct or class. This is indicated by block 1136.

If the property does not represent an array, struct or non-entity class(in this context, a class does not have its own O-R map while an entitydoes, and the entity map describes its classes map), the translator thendetermines whether the property represents a joined child entity (thatis, an entity that is to be read by the same SQL statement as itsparent). This is indicated by block 1138. If so, then construction of aselect list for the child entity is begun. This is indicated by block1140. In other words, the process represented by the flow diagram ofFIG. 22 is begun again for the child entity.

If the property does not represent a joined child entity at block 1138,the translator determines whether the property represents a non-joinedchild (that is, an entity that is to be read in a SQL statementdifferent from its parent) that has properties in its entity key. Thisis illustrated by block 1142 in FIG. 23. It should be noted that if thechild entity has no properties in its key, then no columns are addedsince the entity is identified through its parent's key. However, if thechild does have properties in its entity key, then the foreign keycolumns for the child are added to the select list. This is indicated byblock 1144.

If the property does not represent a non-joined child at block 1142,then the translator determines whether the property represents anon-joined child entity collection. This is indicated by block 1146. Ifso, no columns are added to the select list. The child entities in thecollection are identified through the parent key in the parent. Theforeign key is on the child's table and since the parent table is beingread, there is nothing to select for the child.

However, if the property does not represent a non-joined child entitycollection at block 1146, then the translator determines whether theproperty represents an association. This is indicated by block 1148. Ifso, the foreign key columns for the associated entity are added to theselect list as indicated by block 1150.

If, at block 1148, the translator determines that the property does notrepresent an association, then it merely represents a data property andthe column(s) for that property are added to the select list. This isindicated by block 1152.

The translator then determines whether there are more properties in thecurrent entity to process as indicated by block 1154. If so, processingreturns to block 1132. If not, however, the entity has been fullyprocessed.

FIG. 24 is a UML diagram of a containment hierarchy for an Order entity.Applying the algorithms described with respect to FIGS. 22 and 23 to thediagram of FIG. 24 yields a select list as shown in FIG. 25. FIGS. 25Aand 25B illustrate exemplary class definitions, in pseudo-code, for theentity Order and the entity OrderDetail.

Therefore, it can be seen that the translator first adds the keycolumns, in this case the ID column, for Order to the select list 1160.Next, the translator adds the date column. Then, the translatorencounters the Details collection. The translator thus continues to addthe columns for the OrderDetail's key fields, in this case ID. Thetranslator then encounters the SubstitutionPrefs class and goes throughthe process of adding all columns representing SubstitutionPrefs and itsproperties. Thus, the translator executes the algorithms illustrated inFIGS. 22 and 23 for the SubstitutionPrefs class.

Having completely processed the SubstitutionPrefs class, the translatorprocesses the inheritance entities InStock and BackOrdered and its childCancelationPrefs. In other words, columns identifying the entities andnon-inherited properties for all of the entities in the inheritancehierarchy for OrderDetail are added to the select list 1160. Thus, allproperties are processed, one entity at a time.

The translator then encounters the Items collection and all columnsidentifying entities in the Items collection and non-inherited columnsfor the Items collection are added to the select list. The column forthe miscellaneous property is then added. As indicated by the bracket1162, the entire OrderDetail class has now been processed and itscolumns have been constructed into the select list 1160.

The translator then continues through the class definition of Order thusplacing in the select list the columns for Tax, Subtotal, and Total. Thetranslator then goes back through the algorithms shown in FIGS. 22 and23 to add all columns identifying the ShippingPrefs class and columnsfor its properties.

It can thus be seen that the translation algorithm combines all of thecontainment hierarchy illustrated in FIG. 24 into a single select listthat is structured as expected in the result set for data accessingsystem 12.

In order to create an “order by” clause for the SQL statement, a numberof rules are illustratively applied. First, an entity being selected orordered must have its key fields in the OrderByList unless it is asingleton composition or association as defined by the Unified ModelingLanguage (UML). If any entity's key consists of multiple fields, theymust be grouped together within the “order by” clause. An entity's depth(which refers to the number of compositions or associations required toreach the entity from the entity being queried)_determines its positionin the “order by” clause. All entities with the depth of zero are belocated in the “order by” clause before entities with a depth of one,and so on. The ordering of entities that share the same depth does notmatter, except that singleton compositions or associations for thatdepth are listed prior to collections.

Therefore, again referring to FIG. 24, if the Order entity is beingqueried, then it has a depth of zero. The ShippingPrefs entity has adepth of the one and the OrderDetail entity also has a depth of one, butit is placed in the “order by” clause after the ShippingPrefs entity,because the ShippingPrefs entity is a singleton. Of course, in theInStock and BackOrdered entities are in an “isA” relationship withOrderDetail, so they also have a depth of one.

The SubstitutionPrefs, CancellationPrefs and Items classes all have adepth of two. However, the Items class is placed in the “order by”clause last because it is a collection.

ResultSet Processing

Having now discussed how to format the select list in a variety ofdifferent scenarios so that the relational database query can beexecuted against the relational database, the way that a result set isprocessed into an entity (such as in the containment hierarchy diagramshown in FIG. 24) can be discussed.

Recall that, as the select list 1160 in FIG. 25 is created, the metadatadescribing the entities from which data is being retrieved is generatedand saved. Table 4 illustrates an algorithm that can be used to build anentity graph instance given a result set expected by data accessingsystem 12, and its corresponding metadata.

In the format shown in Table 4, the steps with parenthesized numbers areexecuted in a fashion similar to subroutines. In other words, aftercompleting them, they return to the programming module that called them.For the steps within each of the “subroutines”, execution flow moves tothe next line, unless otherwise indicated. Execution begins byperforming the steps indicated by (1).

TABLE 4 (1) Build the root entity or entity collection . . . a. For theentity or entity collection, perform (2). (2) Reference the result setmetadata to determine what type of complex data type is being built . .. a. If this is an array, struct, or class, perform (3). b. If this isan entity or entity collection, do the following: i. If this entity orentity collection is being loaded eager non-joined, do the following: 1.Emit an additional query to the database to get the child result set.(At this point, the child result set is processed. When finished withthe child result set, we return to where we left off in the parentresult set.) 2. Proceed to step iii. ii. If the load of this entity orentity collection is deferred, do the following: 1. Attach informationto the entity or entity collection to allow an additional query to begenerated and executed if this property is accessed later. 2. Skip theremaining lines of (2). iii. If this is an entity, perform (4). iv. Ifthis is an entity collection, do the following: 1. Reference the resultset metadata to get the type of the collection, and create a newinstance of the collection. 2. Starting on the current row do thefollowing: a. Perform (4) for the entity defined in the row. b. Add theentity to the collection. c. Keep moving to the next row in the resultset until you move past the last row, or the entity key value of theentity defined in the row is different from the previous entity, or theentity defined in the row has a different parent than the previousentity (determined from the parent key information in the row). d. Ifpositioned after the last row, or the parent changed, or the entity keyvalue of the entity defined in the row is equal to that of the firstentity in the collection, then the collection is built-move back to thestarting row, and proceed to (2)c. Otherwise, go back to (2)b.iv.2.a.(Note: a collection is represented in the result set in a range of rows.The key columns of the current entity and all its parent entities up tothe root of the current result set are referenced to determine if a rowis within this range. Also, if a collection has a child collection(direct or indirect) then the values of each of the parent collection'sentities will potentially be duplicated across multiple rows. This mustbe taken into account when creating the parent collection.) c. If thisis not the root entity, attach the new instance to its parent. (3)Create an array, struct, or class instance and initialize it with theappropriate data from the result set . . . a. Reference the result setmetadata to get the type of the array, struct or class, and create a newinstance of that type. b. Populate the properties of the new array,struct, or class instance by performing (6). (4) Reference the resultset metadata to determine if this is an inheritance entity . . . a. Ifthis is not an inheritance entity, do the following: i. Reference theresult set metadata to get the type of the entity and entity key, andcreate new instances of each. ii. Populate the entity key instance byperforming (5). iii. Attach the entity key to the entity. iv. Populatethe properties of the new entity instance by performing (6). b. If thisis an inheritance entity, do the following: i. Reference the result setmetadata and the row's type discriminator columns to get the type of theentity and entity key, and create new instances of each. ii. Populatethe entity key instance by performing (5). iii. Attach the entity key tothe entity. iv. For each “fragment” that makes-up of this entity type,perform (6). (A fragment is a range of columns in the result set whichrepresents the declared (non-inherited) properties of an entity in theinheritance hierarchy. The result set will contain fragments for allentities in the inheritance hierarchy from the base-most entity involvedin the query up to and including all its descendents. However, theconcrete entity that is being instantiated may be made-up of a subset ofthe fragments in the result set. Namely, the ones that represent theentities on the path from the base-most entity to the concrete entity.)(5) Populate the properties of the key . . . a. For each property in thekey, retrieve the value from the result set and assign it to theproperty. (Note: It is possible for a key to not have properties.) (6)Populate the properties (or a subset of the properties) of the instance. . . a. While populating the properties: i. If the property is a simpletype (int, enum, string, etc.), retrieve the value from the result setand assign it to the property. If the property is complex data type,perform (2).

Therefore, assume that a query result has been returned in a pluralityof columns from the relational database. Also assume that the metadatacorresponding to those query results has been retrieved from memory indata accessing system 12. First, the root entity for entity collectioncorresponding to the search results is created. This is indicated by (1)in Table 4. For the entity or entity collection, the subroutineidentified by (2) in Table 4 is performed.

In that subroutine, the result set metadata is referenced to determinewhat type of complex data type is being built. If it is an array, structor non-entity class, then subroutine (3) is performed. In subroutine(3), the array, struct or class instance is created and initialized withthe appropriate data from the result set. This is accomplished byreferencing the result set metadata to obtain the type of the array,struct or class, and by creating a new instance of that type. The newarray, struct or class is then populated with properties by performingsubroutine (6).

In subroutine (6), a population of properties takes place. In order topopulate the properties, if the property is a simple type (such as aninteger, enumerator, string, etc.), the value of the property isretrieved from the result set and is simply assigned to the property inthe instance. If the property is a complex data type, then subroutine(2) is performed for that data type.

Under (2)b of Table 4, if the complex data type being built is an entityor entity collection, then two different things can be performed. First,the entity or entity collection may be loaded eager non-joined. In thatcase, child entities will not have been read by the query the first timearound, so another query is created in order to read the child nodes.Once the child result set is retrieved, the child result set isprocessed and processing continues in the parent result set where it wasleft off. When that is complete, processing proceeds to step iii under(2).

On the other hand, if under (2)b it is determined that the load of theentity or entity collection is deferred, then information is added tothe entity or entity collection in order to allow an additional query tobe generated and executed if the property is accessed later. That beingthe case, the remaining steps in (2) are skipped.

If processing has continued to (2)iii, then it is determined whether thepresent complex data type is an entity. If so, then subroutine (4) isexecuted. Similarly, if under (2)iv the present entity is a collection,then, for each entity in the collection, subroutine (4) is performed.

A collection is represented in the result set as a range of rows. Thekey columns of the current entity and all its parent entities up to theroot of the current result set are referenced in order to determine if arow is within this range. Also, if a collection has a child collection,then the values of each of the parent collection's entities willpotentially be duplicated across multiple rows. This is taken intoaccount when creating the parent collection.

Assuming that the property is either an entity or an entity collectionunder (2)iii or (2)iv, then processing proceeds to (4) in Table 2. Inthat case, the result set metadata is referenced to determine if thepresent entity is an inheritance entity. If it is not an inheritanceentity, then the result set metadata is referenced to obtain the type ofthe entity and entity key and to create new instances of each. Theentity key instance is populated by performing (5) and the entity key isattached to the entity. The properties of the new entity instance arepopulated by performing (6).

If the current entity is an inheritance entity, then the result setmetadata is referenced and the type discriminator columns for the rowswhich have been returned are also referenced in order to determine thetype of entity and entity key, and a new instance of each is created.The entity key instance is populated by performing (5) and the entitykey is attached to the entity. For each fragment that makes up eachentity type, the fragment is populated by performing (6).

A fragment is a range of columns in the result set that represents thedeclared (non-inherited) properties of an entity in the inheritancehierarchy. The result set contains fragments for all entities in theinheritance hierarchy from the base-most entity involved in the query upto and including all of its descendents. However, the concrete entitythat is being instantiated may be made up of a subset of fragments inthe result set; namely, the fragments in the result set that representthe entities on the path from the base-most entity to the concreteentity.

Population of the properties of the entity key (5) is performed for eachproperty in the key. The value of that property is retrieved from theresult set and is assigned to the property. Of course, it should benoted that it is possible for a key not to have properties. In thatcase, no properties are populated.

It can be seen at this point that the full current entity being workedon has now been created from the result set and the correspondingmetadata. In order to form a graph, such as that shown in FIG. 24, thecurrent entity must be placed in the graph. Therefore, at (2)c, if thecurrent entity which has just been built is not the root entity, then itis attached to its parent in the graph.

This type of processing is performed for each entity represented in theresult set until the full graph is generated. Thus, the newly generatedgraph can be returned to the client by data accessing system 12.

Set Operations

Another problem that exists with current object-relational systems isthat changes to persistent objects are performed one object at a timeoutside of the database. Thus, in order to change or update a propertyof a set of objects, each object is brought out of the database,manipulated and sent back one at a time.

EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212 addresses the aforementioned problem.EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212 allows the developer to express updating aset of objects in terms of properties of the objects. Referring to FIG.1, the request is formulated at 30. The request 30 is provided to thedata access system 12, which translates request 30 to a suitablerelational database request 32 that can be executed by the relationaldata store mechanism 14. In one embodiment, the relational data storemechanism 14 executes within the computer having the relational database16, or with fast access thereto, such that the corresponding columns foreach of the properties requested in request 32 can be updated orotherwise changed without the need for other components of the system,such as data access system 12, to receive the corresponding data.

FIG. 14 illustrates an example of EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212. Like theAdHocQueryCriteria 210, EntitySetUpdateCriteria 212 includes portions1002 and 1004 that define the classes, herein “Order” and “Detail”,respectively, having fields which are mapped to corresponding databasetables. In particular, these two business objects (or entities) aremapped to the database tables by maps stored at 18 in FIG. 1. In portion1006, the developer states the set operation he/she wants performed interms of objects, herein EntitySetUpdateCriteria. Portion 1008 definesthe set to be updated via the alias and “Where” expression, whileportion 1010 defines properties to be updated and provides new valuesfor these properties via value expressions.

The developer defines a set to be updated by providing the alias viaCriteria.EntityAlias. In the illustrative example of FIG. 14, theobjects of the “Order” class will be updated. The “Parent Key” providesa unique ID for the parent of the class of objects to be updated, whichdefines the scope of the objects to be updated.

The “Where” statement is similar to the “Where” statement as provided inAdHocQueryCriteria 210 illustrated in FIG. 6 and includes typicallyexpressions referencing object properties in order to define the set ofobjects that will be updated. In this example, only those orders havinga detail with price greater than 300 will be updated.

The “PropertyAssignments” statement specifies a list of one or moreobjects. Each item in the list defines a property of the object to beupdated and specifies an expression for the new value of the object.

As indicated above, new values for updating properties are specified viaexpressions. Expressions were discussed above in more detail, but insummary are composed from properties, constants and operators. Inaddition, aggregate functions can also be implemented in the expression.In the example illustrated in FIG. 14, “Criteria.Sum” adds all thedetails prices for the order and enters the new value in the“Order.Total” property. Other aggregate functions that are supportedinclude finding the maximum value in a set, finding the minimum value ina set, or computing the average value. As appreciated by those skilledin the art, other set computations could also be implemented.

It should be noted that references can be made to related objects forperforming operations on sets. For example, properties of parent objectscan be references when updating lower-level (child) objects. Likewise,one can also reference indirect relations, such as grandchildren, orassociated or child objects of parent objects.

EntitySetUpdateCriteria is an example of a set based operation specifiedin terms of object properties. In the illustrated example, it sets thevalue of a property to the value of a sum expression in terms of otherproperties. Other set based operations, which can be performed byrelational data store mechanism 14 without retrieving data pertaining tothe objects individually and passing the data to data access system 12,include removing a set of objects as a unit, moving a set of objectsfrom one location to another (an example is moving General Ledgertransactions from the ledger table to a history or archive table), orcopying a set of objects from one location to another. Generally, theset operation is performed in terms of types of classes of objectsidentified with statement such as “EntityAlias” and where the “Where”expression defines the set of objects of the class, and an action (e.g.updating, moving, deleting, copying) is then defined by a statementsimilar to Property.Assignments.

The steps involved in performing a set operation such asEntitySetUpdateCriteria are illustrated in FIG. 15. At step 1020, a setoperation request is made by passing a corresponding set operationcriteria such as EntitySetUpdateCriteria to the data access system 12.Data access system 12 reads the corresponding map 18 at step 1022 toidentify the columns effected by the properties mentioned in“PropertyAssignments” at step 1024. A suitable relational databaserequest 32 such as a SQL UPDATE statement is then provided to relationaldata stored mechanism 14 at step 1026 to implement the desired setoperation.

Containment Hierarchy

FIG. 29 is an example of a hierarchical structure 1300 of an exemplaryapplication comprising objects or entities. As illustrated, entities canbe organized as components 1302, 1304 and 1306, which can comprise oneor more entities. A component, as used herein, is one or more entitiesgrouped together to achieve a common purpose. Although modulesimplementing the present invention may not include references tocomponents, a developer may want to design the application withcomponents in mind.

In the exemplary embodiment, the entities or objects are organized in aparent/child relationship. Component 1302 includes those entities thatconstitute an Order for a company. In particular, an Order entity 1308includes information such a subtotal, tax, freight and total properties.An Address entity 1310 is a child entity of the Order entity 1308 andmay include information pertaining to the shipping address for aspecific order. Likewise, the Order entity 1308 may include a number ofOrderLine entities 1312, while each OrderLine entity 1312 can compriseone or more OrderSerial entities 1314 having further information. Itshould be noted that the notation “n” in FIG. 29 is used to indicatethat the particular entity could comprise a number of identicallystructured entities. For example, as indicated above, one or moreOrderSerial entities 1314 can be a child entity (indicated by thediamond line) of an OrderLine entity 1312.

In the example herein illustrated, component 1304 generally pertains toCustomer information and includes a Customer entity 1316, where eachCustomer entity 1316 can include one or more Address entities 1318.

The Customer entities 1316 and the Order entities 1308 are each childentities of a Company entity 1320, the set of which comprise childentities of an Enterprise entity 1322. Component 1306 comprising, inthis example, one or more currency entities 1324 is also a child of theEnterprise entity 1322.

Besides the parent/child hierarchy of structure 1300, there also exists,in this example, a uni-directional association between classes ofentities. A class is a set of similarly structured entities. Asindicated above, all of the Order entities 1308 fall within an Orderclass. Likewise, the Customer entities 1316 pertain to a Customer class.The association indicated by arrow 1328 denotes that a class may know ofanother class. In this example, the Order class knows about the Customerclass, but does not incorporate or own it such as in the case of aparent/child relationship.

Entity Key

An entity manages data. The entity preserves its internal data and theintegrity of its relationships with other entities. Data of the entityis accessed through properties. Each entity is a form of an abstraction.Characteristics of an entity also include that it has an identity,represented by a subclass of an abstract class “EntityKey”. Within theoverall hierarchy, each entity that manages data in structure 1300 islocation independent in that it does not know where it is stored or whoowns it. However, the EntityKey is used to define its relationship withother entities and can be thought of as being represented by theconnections in FIG. 29.

An instance of an entity may be contained within an instance of anotherentity. The contained entity is called the child, while the container iscalled the parent. A child instance cannot exist longer than its parentand must have one and only one parent. The set of all such relationshipsfor an application is its containment hierarchy. This sort of hierarchyparallels many business applications. It has been found that supportingthis hierarchy makes the system a better fit for developers inconstructing business applications.

FIG. 29 is an example of a containment hierarchy for an application. Thecontainment hierarchy describes the types of entities and theircorresponding parent-child relationships. There is a root of thecontainment hierarchy, herein illustrated as the “Enterprise” container1322. The root container or entity commonly supplies the address of aserver for the containment hierarchy, although classes or instances canbe located on other servers or computer readable media. In oneembodiment, the root entity supplies the URL (Universal Remote Locator)of the server. In this embodiment, another broad class of containers arethe Company entities 1320.

It should be noted that the containment hierarchy is not the same as aninheritance hierarchy. Inheritance hierarchy is a classification ofrelationships in which each item except the top one is a specializedform of the item above it. In the example of FIG. 29, the Order class1308 and the Customer class 1316 are not specialized forms of theCompany class 1320. Rather, the Order class 1308 and the Customer class1316 are different classes holding different types of information. Thisis not to say inheritance can not be present in the ContainmentHierarchy. In some embodiments, an inheritance hierarchy may be presentfor any class. Thus, for example there can be variations within a classsuch as variations of the Customer class 1316

There are three forms of entities in an application. The forms includethe component containers “Enterprise” 1322 and “Company” 1320, primaryentities and supporting entities. The primary or root entity is thefocus of a component container of the same name, while supportingentities are either children of the primary entity or its peers. Forexample, the Order component 1302 consists of the Order root entity1308, while the Address 1310, OrderLine 1312 and OrderSerial 1314 aresupporting entities. The data for entities is usually stored in databasetables such as described above with respect to FIG. 1. Components are aunit of logical design and do not interact with the database.

As indicated above, each of the properties in an entity 20 is mapped toa corresponding entity table 26 and a specific column 28 in a givenentity table 26 as illustrated in FIG. 1. Each entity table alsoincludes, in addition to columns for the attributes, one or more columnsthat identify all the parents of a particular entity. Referring to FIG.34 and using OrderSerial by way of example, the OrderSerial Table 1350would include columns for identifiers, in particular, “Company_id” 1352,“Order_id” 1354, OrderLine_id 1356 and Serial Number 1358, which maycomprise one of the attributes, and which may function as its ownidentifier (id).

In a relational database, interaction with the table would requirespecifying each of the identifiers in order to identify and work withthe data associated with a particular entity, in this example, dataassociated with a specific OrderSerial entity 1314. However, thisinformation is inferred from its parent in the containment hierarchy.For instance, if one is working with a particular OrderLine entity 1312and now wants to inquire about, or perform an action upon, a OrderSerialentity 1314, the data access system 12 can ascertain which OrderSerialentity or entities the user is referring to without needing toreidentify the parents of the entity. In the present invention, thecontainment hierarchy allows the relationship of the tables (i.e., theidentifiers such as illustrated in FIG. 34), and hence, the relationshipof the entities, be an implicit background piece of information. Inother words, the identity of the entity is inferred from parent/childrelationship so that it doesn't need to be restated or managed in otherways. In a relational database system, the identifiers found in thetables used to identify the entity are called a primary key, wherein thecombination of the identifiers is unique. However, typically, primarykeys are just a collection of columns and have no rich behavior attachedto them. In addition, user selected identifiers may only be uniquewithin a certain scope (such as a single business unit) and not uniqueover the entire range of the application. Surrogate keys, which arecommonly generated by the application and hidden from the user, may beunique, but they do not describe hierarchies such as who is the parentof the entity referred to by the identifier.

Another aspect of the present invention is an EntityKey that solvesthese problems, in particular, the EntityKey associated with each entityallows each entity to be unique throughout the containment hierarchy, aswell as infer from the position of the entity within the containmenthierarchy who the parents are. An entity is an object that is identifiedby an entity key, or stated differently, the key for an entity. AnEntityKey serves the same function as the primary key on a relationaltable; however, unlike a relational primary key it is universally uniqueacross the application space and is hierarchical, i.e. it is aware ofits position in the hierarchy. In the architecture, the EntityKey is adefined class that is distinct from the entities. The EntityKey classcan be mapped to a relational database table in a manner similar toentity 20, class-table mapping 18 and entity table 26. Every entitythroughout the hierarchy has one and only one EntityKey value. Given thekey for an entity, one can retrieve the entity, whether it is on a localserver, or located in a wide area network such as the Internet.

Each EntityKey contains, for purposes of this concept, three pieces ofinformation: the type or class of the entity to which it refers, the IDof that entity to which it refers and information as to the EntityKey ofthe parent to that entity. FIG. 30 is a pictorial representation of anEntityKey (herein, OrderSerial.Key) 1380A for a particular OrderSerialentity 1314A.

An entity in the hierarchy is fully identified by its identifier plusthat of its parents. In this manner, the same local identifier can beused in two or more locations of the overall space because differentparents would be involved in uniquely identifying the entity. This maybe more readily apparent by pictorially representing the Enterprisespace of FIG. 29. Referring to FIG. 31, the Enterprise is indicated bycircle 1400. The Enterprise 1400 can include a plurality of companies,herein Company A 1402 and Company B 1404. However, each Company 1402 and1404 can have two Orders, both having the same identifier, herein “Order1” 1406 and “Order 2” 1408. Nevertheless, entities within Company A 1402would still be uniquely identified with respect to entities of Company B1404 although the identifiers for Order 1 1406 and Order 2 1408 havebeen used within each Company because each of the entities is uniquelyidentified by its associated key having the parent/child relationshipsof the hierarchy.

It should be noted that in many applications, the data for Company A isstored in a completely different database then the data for Company B.

There is also a separate, independent class associated with OrderSerial1314 herein identified as OrderSerial.Key. In general, the EntityKey isof a separate class than the class it refers to. Entity 1380A is anexample of an object of the OrderSerial.Key class. Referring back toFIG. 30, the OrderSerial entity 1314A contains all the attributes 1420relevant to the Order Serial, which could be any number of attributes.The OrderSerial.Key 1380A contains a subset of one or more attributes ofthe OrderSerial entity 1314A specifically, the OrderSerial.Key includesidentifier attributes 1422. Thus, if OrderSerial entity 1314A includes athousand attributes, but two of the attributes make each OrderSerialentity unique, those attributes get copied into the OrderSerial.Key toform the identifier back to the entity. Arrow 1424 represents the commonidentifier attribute or attributes between entity 1314A and entity1380A.

The attribute or attributes of the OrderSerial.Key that make each entityof OrderSerial unique is the first element of an EntityKey, whichthereby allows the key to be associated with a particular entity.

A second element of an EntityKey is the type 1426 of the entity to whichit has an identifier. In the present example, the type of the class isOrderSerial.

A third element of an EntityKey is information about the EntityKey ofthe parent of the entity. In the present embodiment, this information isa reference, indicated by arrow 1430, to the parent key 1440corresponding to the parent of entity 1314A. In other words, the thirdelement could be a reference to another key. This structure makesEntityKeys recursively defined However, it should be understood thatsome or all of the parent key information could be stored in theEntityKey directly, if desired. It should be understood that these formsand other similar forms for storing and accessing EntityKey informationis intended to be covered herein.

Referring now to FIG. 32, EntityKeys are provided for an entity ofCompany, an entity of Order, an entity of OrderLine and entity ofOrderSerial. In this example, the ID constitutes one field and the typecan be ascertained from the name of the key. For example, typeOrderSerial is obtained from the name OrderSerial.Key. References toparent keys are illustrated by arrows. Thus, again, the location of anentity in the hierarchy is completely defined by the associatedEntityKey.

In the recursive form of storing EntityKeys, it should be noted thatalthough each EntityKey includes type or class information to which itpertains it does not know the type or class of its parent. Thatinformation is found by looking at the type information in the parentkey that it references. This is a particularly advantageous feature forit allows classes to be reused throughout the containment hierarchy.Referring back to FIG. 29, it is illustrated that the Order class 1302has a child class of Address 1310. Likewise, the Customer class 1316also has a child class of Address 1318. The Address classes 1310 and1318 are actually conceptually the same; but the instances are disjointsince they are under different parents. However, the entities areuniquely defined in each form of Address class, wherein each Addressclass 1310 and 1318 may be stored in a different database table. In thismanner, one can describe a position in the containment hierarchy withoutforcing a class to forever be in that position.

As explained above, each EntityKey has information such as a referenceto its parent key, but it does not know what type of parent it is. Thedecision of what type of parent is made or defined by the mapping(s) 18illustrated in FIG. 1 for the complete set of classes and tables.

The set of identifiers 1422 as illustrated in FIG. 30 of an EntityKeycorresponds to the primary key columns of a table holding the data forthat entity. Referring to FIG. 34, assume that the primary key of thetable holding OrderSerial entities is Company_ID 1352, Order_ID 1354,OrderLine_ID 1356, and Serial Number 258. The identifier attribute 322in the OrderSerial.Key 280A is mapped directly to the last of theprimary key columns, while the parent keys of 280A are mapped to columns252, 254, 256 in a similar fashion. This EntityKey to database keycorrespondence also extends to foreign keys. All simple associationsbetween entities are implemented using keys. For example, in FIG. 29,Order.Key would have a reference of type Customer.Key that implementsthe association from Order to Customer. This key can easily be mapped tothe Customer foreign key in the Order table.

It should also be noted that tables are commonly designed with surrogaterather than intelligent keys. An intelligent primary key is seen andspecified by the end user, while a surrogate primary key is generated bythe application and hidden from the user. Surrogate keys are often usedto allow renaming the user visible identifier of a table withoutdatabase impact or to save space when the size of the primary key isvery large and often referenced in foreign keys. When surrogate keys areused, the table will have the surrogate primary key and an alternate keyhaving the user visible identifier.

Both intelligent and surrogate EntityKeys are supported. In the presentembodiment, if a surrogate EntityKey is used its ID properties areprivate (since they are generated and hold ho meaning to the consumer ofthe entity); otherwise they are public.

Class Key

A second related abstraction is the Class Key. Since a given entity canbe used in more than one place in the containment hierarchy, there is amechanism for indicating which node in the hierarchy to process. TheClass Key is that mechanism and contains two pieces of information: thetype of the entity to which it refers and information as to the ClassKey of the parent of the entity. Note the similarity to the definitionof the EntityKey. In fact, the EntityKey is a derivative of and inheritsfrom the Class Key, thereby allowing an EntityKey to be suppliedanywhere a Class Key is required. Thus the Class Key is alsohierarchically defined. The illustration of FIG. 32 of an EntityKey canbe changed into an illustration of a Class Key by simply removing theentity identifiers (IDs).

Generally the Class Key can be used to reference a node in thecontainment hierarchy as it pertains to classes of entities,particularly describing uniquely a name for each class in the hierarchyas well as its position in the hierarchy. In contrast, the EntityKeyprovides a unique name for each entity in the containment hierarchy anddescribes its position in the hierarchy.

The EntityKeys and Class Keys are used when performing create, read,update and delete operations on business objects or entities. Forexample, when reading an entity, a parent key referring to a componentcontainer should be provided. This provides a scope for the read andalso makes it easier for the developer to specify a complex location inthe hierarchy.

Besides EntityKeys and Class Keys, another form of key is a blendbetween these keys. As discussed above, an EntityKey is a form of aClass Key, but includes further information to a particular entity(i.e., its identifier attributes). By simply using a chain of Class Keysfollowed by Entity Keys, all the entities under a particular parent canbe ascertained. FIG. 33 illustrates an example of a blended key 1544. Inthis example, EntityKeys have been provided for the Enterprise, Companyand Order, which in turn has specified a particular Order entity.However, since the OrderLine.Key and the OrderSerial.Key do not includeIds, they are Class Keys. The blended key 1544 of FIG. 33 could bereceived by the data access system 12 to formulate a query for datastore mechanism 14 to retrieve all series for a particular order,irrespective of line.

Although the present invention has been described with reference toparticular embodiments, workers skilled in the art will recognize thatchanges may be made in form and detail without departing from the spiritand scope of the invention.

1. A computer implemented method of performing an operation on a set ofentities in a database, comprising: receiving a request that identifiesa set of entities and a property of the entities to be operated on,wherein receiving comprises receipt by a processor functionallyassociated with the computer; identifying a table and a column in arelational database that correspond to the property to be operated on,wherein identifying comprises utilizing the processor to identify thetable and the column; operating on the data of the identified column asa function of the request, wherein operating on the data comprisesutilizing the processor to operate on the data; wherein receiving therequest includes receiving an expression as a function of the propertyof the set of entities, and wherein operating on the data of theidentified column comprises applying the expression to data in theidentified column; and wherein the processor identifies and operates byexecuting computer-readable instructions embedded on a computer-readablestorage medium; and wherein the expression includes an aggregatefunction, and wherein operating on the data of the identified columncomprises performing the aggregate function upon data in the identifiedcolumn.
 2. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying the table and thecolumn comprises: accessing a mapping that maps between entities storedin the relational database and the table and the column.
 3. The methodof claim 2 wherein identifying the table and the column comprises: fromthe mapping, obtaining a location of the table and the column.
 4. Themethod of claim 1 wherein operating on the data of the identified columncomprises: removing the data of the identified column so as to removeeach of the entities as a unit.
 5. The method of claim 1 whereinoperating on the data of the identified column comprises: updating thedata of the identified column.
 6. The method of claim 1 whereinoperating on the data of the identified column comprises: moving datafrom the identified column.
 7. The method of claim 1 wherein operatingon the data of the identified column comprises: copying data from theidentified column.
 8. A computer-implemented data storage system,comprising: a relational data store component; a mapping that mapsbetween entities and a location of columns in the relational data storecomponent that store data associated with the entities; a data accesssystem configured to receive an object-oriented request that identifiesa set of entities of interest and a property of the set of entities tobe operated on, to access the mapping to identify a column in therelational data store component that corresponds to at least one entityin the identified set of entities, and to operate on the data of theidentified column as a function of the object-oriented request; whereinthe data access system utilizes a processor of the computer to performsaid identify, access and operate steps, and wherein utilizing theprocessor comprises utilizing the processor to perform the identify,access and operate steps by executing computer-readable instructionsembedded on a computer-readable storage medium; and wherein theobject-oriented request received by the data access system includes anexpression as a function of the property of the set of entities to beoperated on, and wherein the data access system operates on the data ofthe identified column by applying the expression to data of theidentified column, and wherein the expression includes an aggregatefunction, and wherein the data access system operates on the data of theidentified column by performing the aggregate function upon data of theidentified column.
 9. The data storage system of claim 8 wherein thedata access system is further configured to generate a relationaldatabase request identifying the column that contains data associatedwith the property to be operated on.
 10. The data storage system ofclaim 8 wherein the data access system is further configured to operateon the data of the identified column by removing data from theidentified column in accordance with the request.
 11. The data storagesystem of claim 8 wherein the data access system is configured to updatedata in the identified column in accordance with parameters reflected inthe request.
 12. The data storage system of claim 8 wherein the dataaccess system is configured to move data from the identified column inaccordance with parameters reflected in the request.
 13. The datastorage system of claim 8 wherein the data access system is configuredto copy data from the identified column in accordance with parametersreflected in the request.
 14. A computer-implemented data accessingsystem in an object-relational (O-R) data storage system that includes arelational database component, the data accessing system exposing aninterface which, when invoked, causes the data accessing system toperform the steps of: receiving an object-oriented request thatidentifies a set of entities of interest and a property to be operatedon; identifying a table and a column in a relational database portion ofthe O-R database that correspond to the property to be operated on;operating on the data of the identified column as a function of theobject-oriented request; wherein the received object-oriented requestincludes an expression as a function of the property of the set ofentities to be operated on, and wherein operating upon the data of theidentified column comprises operating by applying the expression to dataof the identified column, and wherein the expression includes anaggregate function, and wherein operating upon the data of theidentified column comprises operating by performing the aggregatefunction upon data of the identified column; wherein the data accessingsystem utilizes a processor of the computer to perform said identify andoperate steps, and wherein utilizing the processor comprises utilizingthe processor to perform the identify and operate steps by executingcomputer-readable instructions embedded on a computer-readable storagemedium.
 15. The data accessing system of claim 14 wherein the interfaceobject-oriented request identifies the property of interest.
 16. Thedata accessing system of claim 14 wherein the interface identifies theoperation to performed.
 17. The data accessing system of claim 14wherein the operation comprises at least one of removing data to removean entity as a unit; updating data from the identified column; movingdata from the identified column; and copying data from the identifiedcolumn.